This time over in Europe I had a month of intense travelling and work. In Berlin I visited Marius Oancea, Jeremie Joudioux and Lars Andersson to finish up our review on the current state of research concerning the gravitational spin Hall effect of light (online soon). We also talked about a strategy to tackle some of the open questions discussed in the review.
The visit in Regensburg with Felix Finster was mostly dedicated to prepare the meeting with Jürg Fröhlich and Tom Ilmanen at ETH Zürich the following week. The meeting in Zürich was aimed to understand whether and how the Causal Fermion System Framework and the ETH approach to Quantum Mechanics can fit together.
After three days of intense discussion, we had to come to the conclusion that at present it is not possible to establish a solid link between the two.
The discussion gave me a clear picture where further work is needed to further develop Felix’ CFS framework. However it was great to see that the CFS framework held up to a three day intensive scrutiny by Jürg and Tom even if we were not able to fully convince them of the framework.
At ETH I also found time for a quick coffee with Christoph Niedermann whom I used to be in close contact with during my time on the board of VSETH. Besides catching up, we discussed how PhD programs are structured in different academic institutions.