Abhay Ashtekar

Mailing Address:

104 Davey Lab, Box #171, University Park, Pa 16802

Titles

Atherton Professor

Evan Pugh Professor Emeritus
Eberly Chair Emeritus
Founding Director, Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos (1993 - 2021)

Education

Ph. D. (Physics) University of Chicago, 1974
Doctor Rerum Naturalium Honoris Causa
- Friedrich-Schiller Universitaet, Jena, Germany, 2005
- Universite de la Mediterranee, Aix-Marseille, France, 2010

Selected Honors and Awards

• First Gravity prize in the annual international competition, awarded by the Gravity Research Foundation, Massachusetts, 1977.
• Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, 1981-1985.
• Chancellor's Citation for Academic Excellence, Syracuse University 1987.
• Elected to the Governing Council of the International Society for General Relativity and Gravitation, 1989-1998.
• Rufus Putnam Distinguished Visiting Professor, Ohio University, October 1989.
• Senior Visiting Fellow. British Science and Engineering Research Council, Spring 1991.
• Distinguished Lectures, Institute for Fundamental Theory, University of Florida, Spring 1992.
• Wasserstrom Award for Graduate Teaching and Advising, 1992.
• Distinguished Lectures, Center for Theoretical Physics, University of Maryland, February 1994.
• 1995 Andrejewski Lectures on Mathematical Physics, Federal Republic of Germany.
• Elected Honorary Fellow, Indian Academy of Sciences, 1996.
• Golden Jubilee Visiting Professor, Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India, August 1997.
• Distinguished Lecture Series; Mexican Academy of Science, Mexico-US Foundation for Science and UAM, Mexico City, September 1997.
• Elected Fellow, American Physical Society, 1997.
• Elected Foreign Fellow, The National Academy of Sciences, India 1997.
• Chair, Topical Group in Gravitation, of the American Physical Society, 1998.
• Elected President, American Chapter of the Indian Physics Association (2000-2002).
• Profile featured in The New York Times Scientists at Work, edited by L. Chang, Foreword by Stephen Jay Gould (McGraw Hill, New York, 2000).
• Invited Lecture in the symposium "Les Quanta": un Siecle apres Planck" celebrating 100th anniversary of the publication of Planck's paper on black body radiation, at the French Academie des Sciences, Paris 2000.
• The Centennial Saha Memorial Lecture, Kolkotta, India 2000.
• Wiegand Lectures, St. Johns College, Santa Fe 2001.
• Academy Public Lecture, Indian Academy of Science, 2002, 2004.
• Awarded the senior Forschungspreis by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation 2004.
• Sir C.V. Raman Chair of the Indian Academy of Sciences (2004-2005).
• The S. N. Bose Memorial Lecture, Kolkatta, India 2005.
• The Krammers Chair of Theoretical Physics, University of Utrecht, Spring 2006.
• Awarded Distinguished Scholar Prize by the American Chapter of Indian Association of Physics, 2007.
• Elected President, International Society for General Relativity and Gravitation, 2007-2010.
• Elected Fellow, American Association for Advancement of Science, 2008.
• Lewiner Distinguished Lecture Series, Technion, Israel 2009.
• Doctor Rerum Naturalium Honoris Causa, Universite de la Mediterranee, Aix-Marseille, France 2010
• Ireland Distinguished Lectures, University of New Brunswick, Canada 2010
• Plenary Public Lecture, 102nd Indian Science Congress, Mumbai, 2015
• Address to the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, 2015
• Elected Fellow, International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation, 2016
• National Academic of Sciences, 2016
• Appointed Evan Pugh Professor of Physics, Penn State, 2018
• Awarded the Einstein Prize by the American Physical Society, 2019
• The Penn State Frontiers of Science Lecture Series named after Ashtekar, 2020
• American Institute of Physics “Oral History interview" for  their Niels Bohr Library, 2021
  Appointed to the Advisory Board of the Archimedes Foundation,  Saint Raphël, Cote de Azure, France, 2021
• Pancharatnam Lecture, Raman Research Institute, Bangalore, 2023
• Celebration of the 40th anniversary of the paper that launched Loop Quantum Gravity, Loops-26, Hangzhou, 2026
• Creation of the Ashtekar Award, and Ashtekar Prizes, by the International Society on Loop Quantum Gravity, 2026

Research Interests

Quantum Gravity:

• Quantum geometry and its ramifications
• Black hole entropy
• Quantum field theory on quantum space-times
• Quantum cosmology and the very early universe
• Background independent approach and its relation to low energy physics
• Potential experimental tests

General Relativity:

• Mathematical theory of Black holes
• Isolated horizons and their applications
• Interface of analytical and numerical relativity
• Asymptotics
• Gravitational radiation theory

Other areas:

• Mathematical aspects of quantum field theory
• Gauge theories
• Generalizations of quantum mechanics
• Geometry and physics  

Full List of Publications on Google Scholar 

Selected Publications

1. A. Ashtekar, D. E. Parazio and J. Shu, Thermodynamics of black holes far from equilibrium, Phys Rev. Lett. (Editors' suggestion) (2026); arXiv:2512.11659
2. A. Ashtekar and B. Krishnan, Quasi-Local black hole horizons: Recent advances, Living Rev. (Rel) 28, 8 (2025); arXiv: 2502.11825
3. A. Ashtekar and S. Speziale, Horizons and Null Infinity: A Fugue in 4 Voices,  Phys. Rev.D (Lett) 109, L061501 (2024); arXiv; 2401:15618
4. A. Ashtekar, J. Olmedo, P. Singh, Regular black holes from loop quantum gravity, Invited Chapter for the book Regular Black Holes: Towards a New Paradigm of
   Gravitational Collapse, Ed. C. Bambi, Springer (Singapore 2023) (48 pages) arXiv: 2301.01309
5. Ashtekar, B. Gupt, D. Jeong and V., Alleviating the tension in the cosmic microwave background using Planck scale physics, Physical Review Letters, 125, 051302 (2020); arXiv: 2001.11689
6. A. Ashtekar, J. Olmedo and P. Singh, Quantum transfiguration of Kruskal black holes, Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 241301 (2018); Editors’ Suggestion and highlighted in a Viewpoint article in Physics; arXiv:1806.00648
7. A. Ashtekar, B. Bonga and A. Kesavan, Gravitational waves from isolated systems: Surprising consequences of a positive cosmological constant, Phys.Rev. Lett.116, 051101 (2016), Editor’s Suggestion arXiv: 1510:04990
8. A. Ashtekar, C. Rovelli and M. Reuter, From general relativity to quantum gravity, in General Relativity and Gravitation: A Centennial Perspective, edited by A. Ashtekar, B.K. Berger, J. Isenberg and M.A.H. MacCallum (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2015), arXiv: 1408:4336
9. A. Ashtekar, Geometry and physics of null infinity, in Surveys in Differential Geometry, edited by L. Bieri and S. T.- Yau, pp99-122, (International press, Boston, 2015 ); arXiv: 1409:1800
10. A. Ashtekar, The last 50 years of general relativity: From GR3 to GR20 Warsaw conferences, Gen. Rel. Grav. 46, 1706-1731, (2014); arXiv:1312.6425
11. I. Agullo, A. Ashtekar and W. Nelson, A Quantum Gravity Extension of the Inflationary Scenario, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 251301 (2012) ; arXiv: 1209.1609
12. A. Ashtekar, F. Pretorius and F. Ramazanoglu, Surprises in the evaporation of two dimensional black holes, Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 161303 (2011); arXiv:1011.6442.

Assistant:

Courtney Shaffer