The asymptotic safety scenario in quantum gravity

Asymptotic safety offers the possibility that gravity constitutes a consistent and predictive quantum field theory within Wilsons generalized framework of renormalization. The key ingredient of this scenario is a non-trivial fixed point of the gravitational renormalization group flow which governs the UV behavior of the theory. The fixed point itself thereby guarantees the absence of unphysical UV divergences while its associated finite-dimensional UV-critical surface ensures the predictivity of the resulting quantum theory. This talk summarizes the evidence for the existence of such a fixed point, which emerged from the flow equation for the effective average action, the gravitational beta-functions in 2+ε dimensions, the 2-Killing vector reduction of the gravitational path-integral and lattice simulations. Possible phenomenological consequences are discussed in detail.