Related papers: Planck Length and Cosmology
The existence of a fundamental length (or fundamental time) has been conjectured in many contexts. However, the "stability of physical theories principle" seems to be the one that provides, through the tools of algebraic deformation theory,…
Over the last decade a growing number of quantum-gravity researchers has been looking for opportunities for the first ever experimental evidence of a Planck-length quantum property of spacetime. These studies are usually based on the…
This review consists of two parts. The first part establishes certain astrophysical bounds on the smoothness of classical spacetime. Some of the best bounds to date are based on the absence of vacuum Cherenkov radiation in ultrahigh-energy…
One way the ultraviolet problem may be solved is explicit physical regularization. In this scenario, QFT is only the long distance limit of some unknown non-Poincare-invariant microscopic theory. One can ask how complex and contrived such…
We use the quantum unimodular theory of gravity to relate the value of the cosmological constant, $\Lambda$, and the energy scale for the emergence of cosmological classicality. The fact that $\Lambda$ and unimodular time are complementary…
The newly discovered principle of maximum force makes it possible to summarize special relativity, quantum theory\se, and general relativity in one fundamental limit principle each. The three principles fully contain the three theories and…
We have argued that quantum mechanics and general relativity give a lower bound $\delta l \gtrsim l^{1/3} l_P^{2/3}$ on the measurement uncertainty of any distance $l$ much greater than the Planck length $l_P$. Recently Baez and Olson have…
The existence of a minimal observable length has long been suggested, in quantum gravity, as well as in string theory. In this context a generalized uncertainty relation has been derived which quantum theoretically describes the minimal…
The cosmological constant combined with Planck's constant and the speed of light implies a quantum of mass of approximately 2 x 10^{-65}g. This follows either from a generic dimensional analysis, or from a specific analysis where the…
Close to the Planck energy scale, the quantum nature of space-time reveals itself and all forces, including gravity, should be unified so that all interactions correspond to just one underlying symmetry. In the absence of a full quantum…
An important open question in fundamental physics concerns the nature of spacetime at distance scales associated with the Planck length. The widespread belief that probing such distances necessitates Planck-energy particles has impeded…
Time is a parameter playing a central role in our most fundamental modeling of natural laws. Relativity theory shows that the comparison of times measured by different clocks depends on their relative motions and on the strength of the…
We advance the viewpoint that only relevant modes of the vacuum fluctuations, namely, with wavelengths conditioned by the size, homogeneity, geometry and topology of the Universe, do contribute into the cosmological constant. A formula is…
Planck units are natural physical scales of mass, length and time, built with the help of the fundamental constants $\hbar, c, G$. The functional role of the constants used for the construction of Planck units is different. If the first two…
I argue that the linearity of quantum mechanics is an emergent feature at the Planck scale, along with the manifold structure of space-time. In this regime the usual causality violation objections to nonlinearity do not apply, and nonlinear…
Quantum cosmology in the presence of a fundamental minimal length is analyzed in the context of the flat isotropic and the Taub cosmological models. Such minimal scale comes out from a generalized uncertainty principle and the quantization…
Some recent studies of the properties of D-particles suggest that in string theory a rather conventional description of spacetime might be available up to scales that are significantly smaller than the Planck length. We test this…
There are discernible and fundamental differences between clocks, waves and physical states in classical physics. These fundamental concepts find a common expression in the context of quantum physics in gravitational fields; matter and…
The minimal-length paradigm, a possible implication of quantum gravity at low energies, is commonly understood as a phenomenological modification of Heisenberg's uncertainty relation. We show that this modification is equivalent to a…
Scale dependence of fundamental physical parameters is a generic feature of ordinary quantum field theory. When applied to gravity, this idea produces effective actions generically containing a running Newtonian coupling constant, from…