Abstract: 

In quantum chromodynamics, chiral symmetry breaking is the mechanism behind mass generation for hadrons. This mechanism relies on two main aspects: i) quarks are attracted to each other due to the exchange of gluons, which favors bound-state formation; ii) the non-Abelian interaction enters a strongly correlated regime in the infrared. Since the gravitational interaction is attractive, we might expect a similar mechanism to happen in non-perturbative approaches to quantum gravity. In this talk, I will discuss how such a mechanism could be used to constrain/rule out quantum-gravity theories. I discuss recent investigations of chiral symmetry breaking on two different approaches to quantum gravity involving non-perturbative regimes.