{ "meta": { "api_type": "NWO Projects API", "version": "1.0.2", "licence": { "name": "CC0 1.0 Universal", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0", "description": "To the extent possible under law, all copyright and related or neighbouring rights have been waived worldwide to the data made available through this API." }, "documentation": "https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14918287", "release_date": "2025-08-20T00:00:00", "funder": "https://doi.org/10.13039/501100003246", "ror_id": "https://ror.org/04jsz6e67", "date": "2026-11-05T00:00:00", "count": 1, "per_page": 100, "pages": 1, "page": 1 }, "projects": [ { "project_id": "680-47-433", "title": "Quantum cosmology from loop quantum gravity and spinfoam models", "funding_scheme_id": 473, "funding_scheme": "NWO-Talentprogramma Veni 2013 N", "department": "Exacte en Natuurwetenschappen", "sub_department": "Natuurkunde", "start_date": "2014-01-16T00:00:00", "end_date": "2017-06-13T00:00:00", "reporting_year": 2013, "summary_nl": "One of the main challenges of modern physics is to quantize general relativity. Unlike the other interactions that take place in a fixed spacetime, in the case of gravity the spacetime itself is the dynamical entity to be quantized. This suggests that to quantize gravity a non-perturbative and background-independent approach is needed. My research interests focus on non-perturbative quantizations of gravity, and in particular loop quantum gravity (LQG) and spinfoam models. I am primarily interested in the derivation of a theory for quantum cosmology. Several reasons motivate my research. First of all, without a quantum theory for cosmology we lack a complete description of the dynamics of the early universe, as our current paradigm, the inflationary scenario, suffers from an initial big bang singularity that we expect to be solved by quantum gravity effects. On the other hand, cosmology might be the only accessible way to test quantum gravity. The adaptation of LQG to cosmological scenarios is known as loop quantum cosmology (LQC). LQC has been mainly developed for the quantization of homogeneous models, yielding an important result: The quantum geometry effects solve the\ncosmological singularities by means of a quantum bounce mechanism. LQC is one of the fields where I will focus my research. I want to look deeper into the quantization of\nanisotropic models, for which the quantum dynamics remains unsolved. Furthermore, I want to analyze the quantization of inhomogeneous models in LQC, in particular considering cosmological fluctuations, with the aim of pushing further the development of a quantum theory for inflationary cosmology and extract predictions from it, such as modifications on the power spectrum of cosmological fluctuations. LQC has been derived from canonical LQG. I am also interested in developing\nquantum cosmology from the spinfoam approach, the covariant version of LQG.", "summary_en": "One of the main challenges of modern physics is to quantize general relativity. Unlike the other interactions that take place in a fixed spacetime, in the case of gravity the spacetime itself is the dynamical entity to be quantized. This suggests that to quantize gravity a non-perturbative and background-independent approach is needed. My research interests focus on non-perturbative quantizations of gravity, and in particular loop quantum gravity (LQG) and spinfoam models. I am primarily interested in the derivation of a theory for quantum cosmology. Several reasons motivate my research. First of all, without a quantum theory for cosmology we lack a complete description of the dynamics of the early universe, as our current paradigm, the inflationary scenario, suffers from an initial big bang singularity that we expect to be solved by quantum gravity effects. On the other hand, cosmology might be the only accessible way to test quantum gravity. The adaptation of LQG to cosmological scenarios is known as loop quantum cosmology (LQC). LQC has been mainly developed for the quantization of homogeneous models, yielding an important result: The quantum geometry effects solve the\ncosmological singularities by means of a quantum bounce mechanism. LQC is one of the fields where I will focus my research. I want to look deeper into the quantization of\nanisotropic models, for which the quantum dynamics remains unsolved. Furthermore, I want to analyze the quantization of inhomogeneous models in LQC, in particular considering cosmological fluctuations, with the aim of pushing further the development of a quantum theory for inflationary cosmology and extract predictions from it, such as modifications on the power spectrum of cosmological fluctuations. LQC has been derived from canonical LQG. I am also interested in developing\nquantum cosmology from the spinfoam approach, the covariant version of LQG.", "project_members": [ { "role": "Project leader", "member_id": 262688, "last_name": "Martín Benito", "degree_pre_nominal": "dr.", "initials": "M.", "first_name": "Mercedes", "organisation": "Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen||Faculteit der Natuurwetenschappen, Wiskunde en Informatica||Institute for Mathematics, Astrophysics and Particle Physics (IMAPP)", "organisation_id": 73889, "ror": "https://ror.org/016xsfp80", "active": false }, { "role": "Researcher", "member_id": 262688, "last_name": "Martín Benito", "degree_pre_nominal": "dr.", "initials": "M.", "first_name": "Mercedes", "organisation": "Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen||Faculteit der Natuurwetenschappen, Wiskunde en Informatica||Institute for Mathematics, Astrophysics and Particle Physics (IMAPP)", "organisation_id": 73889, "ror": "https://ror.org/016xsfp80", "active": false }, { "role": "Main Applicant", "member_id": 262688, "last_name": "Martín Benito", "degree_pre_nominal": "dr.", "initials": "M.", "first_name": "Mercedes", "organisation": "Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen||Faculteit der Natuurwetenschappen, Wiskunde en Informatica||Institute for Mathematics, Astrophysics and Particle Physics (IMAPP)", "organisation_id": 73889, "ror": "https://ror.org/016xsfp80", "active": true } ], "products": [ { "title": "Modeling effective FRW cosmologies with perfect fluids from states of the hybrid quantum Gowdy model", "year": 2014, "edition": "2", "start": 24028, "end": 24041, "type": "Wetenschappelijk artikel", "journal_title": "Phys. Rev. D", "authors": [ { "last_name": "Martin-Benito", "initials": "M", "role": "Auteur" } ] }, { "title": "Echo of the quantum bounce", "year": 2014, "edition": "4", "start": 43510, "end": 43516, "type": "Wetenschappelijk artikel", "journal_title": "Phys. Rev. D", "authors": [ { "last_name": "Martin-Benito", "initials": "M", "role": "Auteur" } ] }, { "title": "The quantum echo of the early universe", "year": 2015, "edition": "93", "start": 968, "end": 970, "type": "Wetenschappelijk artikel", "journal_title": "Canadian Journal of Physics", "authors": [ { "last_name": "Martin-Benito", "initials": "M", "role": "Auteur" } ] }, { "title": "Gauge-Invariant Perturbations in Hybrid Quantum Cosmology", "year": 2015, "edition": "06", "start": 45, "end": 79, "type": "Wetenschappelijk artikel", "journal_title": "Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics", "authors": [ { "last_name": "Martín-Benito", "initials": "M.", "role": "Auteur" } ] }, { "title": "Violation of the strong Huygen’s principle and timelike signals from the early Universe", "year": 2015, "edition": "114", "start": 14103, "end": 14107, "type": "Wetenschappelijk artikel", "journal_title": "Physical Review Letters", "authors": [ { "last_name": "Martín-Benito", "initials": "M.", "role": "Auteur" } ] }, { "title": "Hybrid Models in Loop Quantum Cosmology", "year": 2016, "edition": "25", "start": 16420, "end": 16420, "type": "Wetenschappelijk artikel", "journal_title": "International Journal of Modern Physics D", "authors": [ { "last_name": "Martín-Benito", "initials": "M.", "role": "Auteur" } ] }, { "title": "Dirac fields in flat FLRW cosmology: Uniqueness of the Fock quantization", "year": 2016, "edition": "376", "start": 76, "end": 88, "type": "Wetenschappelijk artikel", "journal_title": "Annals of Physics", "authors": [ { "last_name": "Martín-Benito", "initials": "M.", "role": "Auteur" } ] }, { "title": "Unitary evolution and uniqueness of the Fock representation of Dirac fields in cosmological spacetimes", "year": 2015, "edition": "92", "start": 10501, "end": 10501, "type": "Wetenschappelijk artikel", "journal_title": "Physical Review D", "authors": [ { "last_name": "Martín-Benito", "initials": "M.", "role": "Auteur" } ] }, { "title": "Modified FRW cosmologies arising from states of the hybrid quantum Gowdy model", "year": 2015, "edition": "92", "start": 24007, "end": 24021, "type": "Wetenschappelijk artikel", "journal_title": "Physical Review D", "authors": [ { "last_name": "Martín-Benito", "initials": "M.", "role": "Auteur" } ] }, { "title": "Quantum corrections to the Mukhanov-Sasaki equations", "year": 2016, "edition": "93", "start": 10402, "end": 10404, "type": "Wetenschappelijk artikel", "journal_title": "Physical Review D", "authors": [ { "last_name": "Martín-Benito", "initials": "M.", "role": "Auteur" } ] }, { "title": "Timelike information broadcasting in cosmology", "year": 2016, "edition": "93", "start": 24055, "end": 24072, "type": "Wetenschappelijk artikel", "journal_title": "Physical Review D", "authors": [ { "last_name": "Martín-Benito", "initials": "M.", "role": "Auteur" } ] }, { "title": "Unique Fock quantization of a massive fermion field in a cosmological scenario", "year": 2016, "edition": "93", "start": 84053, "end": 84066, "type": "Wetenschappelijk artikel", "journal_title": "Physical Review D", "authors": [ { "last_name": "Martín-Benito", "initials": "M.", "role": "Auteur" } ] }, { "title": "Uniqueness of the Fock quantization of scalar fields in a Bianchi I cosmology with unitary dynamics", "year": 2016, "edition": "94", "start": 10501, "end": 10502, "type": "Wetenschappelijk artikel", "journal_title": "Physical Review D", "authors": [ { "last_name": "Martín-Benito", "initials": "M.", "role": "Auteur" } ] } ] } ] }