Related papers: Analogue spacetimes: Toy models for "quantum gravi…
This article gives an elementary account of the recently proposed theory of spontaneous quantum gravity. It is argued that a viable quantum theory of gravity should be falsifiable, and hence it should dynamically explain the observed…
Quantum gravity is expected to be necessary in order to understand situations where classical general relativity breaks down. In particular in cosmology one has to deal with initial singularities, i.e. the fact that the backward evolution…
Several recent studies have concerned the faith of classical symmetries in quantum space-time. In particular, it appears likely that quantum (discretized, noncommutative,...) versions of Minkowski space-time would not enjoy the classical…
We explain how quantum gravity can be defined by quantizing spacetime itself. A pinpoint is that the gravitational constant G = L_P^2 whose physical dimension is of (length)^2 in natural unit introduces a symplectic structure of spacetime…
The gap between a microscopic theory for quantum spacetime and the semiclassical physics of blackholes is bridged by treating the blackhole spacetimes as highly excited states of a class of nonlocal field theories. All the blackhole…
Flat space-time has not heretofore been thought a suitable locus in which to construct model universes because of the presumed necessity of incorporating gravitation in such models and because of the historical lack of a theory of…
We introduce a class of space-times modeling singular events such as evaporating black holes and topology changes, which we dub as semi-globally hyperbolic space-times. On these space-times we aim to study the existence of reasonable…
We describe a class of modified gravity theories that deform general relativity in a way that breaks time reversal invariance and, very mildly, locality. The algebra of constraints, local physical degrees of freedom, and their linearized…
`How do our ideas about quantum mechanics affect our understanding of spacetime?' This familiar question leads to quantum gravity. The complementary question is also important: `How do our ideas about spacetime affect our understanding of…
General relativity describes the gravitational field geometrically and in a self-interacting way because it couples to all forms of energy, including its own. Both features make finding a quantum theory difficult, yet it is important in the…
The quest for a consistent theory which describes the quantum microstructure of spacetime seems to require some departure from the paradigms that have been followed in the construction of quantum theories for the other fundamental…
The gravity is classically formulated as the geometric curvature of the space-time in general relativity which is completely different from the other well-known physical forces. Since seeking a quantum framework for the gravity is a great…
A method has been recently proposed for defining an arbitrary number of differential calculi over a given noncommutative associative algebra. As an example a version of quantized space-time is considered here. It is found that there is a…
Relational particle models are useful toy models for quantum cosmology and the problem of time in quantum general relativity. This paper shows how to extend existing work on concrete examples of relational particle models in 1-d to include…
Noncommutative geometry is a mathematical framework that expresses the structure of space-time in terms of operator algebras. By using the tools of quantum mechanics to describe the geometry, noncommutative space-times are expected to give…
Time is absolute in standard quantum theory and dynamical in general relativity. The combination of both theories into a theory of quantum gravity leads therefore to a "problem of time". In my essay I shall investigate those consequences…
In quantum geometry, we consider a set of loops, a compact orientable surface and a solid compact spatial region, all inside $\mathbb{R} \times \mathbb{R}^3 \equiv \mathbb{R}^4$, which forms a triple. We want to define an ambient isotopic…
Theories of emergent gravity have established a deep connection between entropy and the geometry of spacetime by looking at the latter through a thermodynamic lens. In this framework, the macroscopic properties of gravity arise in a…
Research in quantum gravity strongly suggests that our world in not fundamentally spatiotemporal, but that spacetime may only emerge in some sense from a non-spatiotemporal structure, as this paper illustrates in the case of causal set…
In this essay I begin to lay out a conceptual scheme for: (i) analysing dualities as cases of theoretical equivalence; (ii) assessing when cases of theoretical equivalence are also cases of physical equivalence. The scheme is applied to…