Related papers: Comments on Background Independence and Gauge Redu…
Work in progress is described which aims to construct a background independent formulation of M theory by extending results about background independent states and observables from quantum general relativity and supergravity to string…
In this note, we describe how the study of backgrounds for general quantum systems can be formulated in terms of the representation theory of abstract $C^*$ algebras. We illustrate our general framework through two example systems:…
Background independence is often emphasized as an important property of a quantum theory of gravity that takes seriously the geometrical nature of general relativity. In a background-independent formulation, quantum gravity should determine…
We propose a definition for background (in)/dependence in dynamical theories of the evolution of configurations that have a continuous symmetry and test this definition on particle models and on gravity. Our definition draws from Barbour's…
The scale dependent effective average action for quantum gravity complies with the fundamental principle of Background Independence. Ultimately the background metric it formally depends on is selected self-consistently by means of a…
We consider in detail the problem of gauge dependence that exists in relativistic perturbation theory, going beyond the linear approximation and treating second and higher order perturbations. We first derive some mathematical results…
We explore a background-independent theory of composite gravity. The vacuum expectation value of the composite metric satisfies Einstein's equations (with corrections) as a consistency condition, and selects the vacuum spacetime. A…
Using the background-metric independence for the traceless mode as well as the conformal mode, 4D quantum gravity is described as a quantum field theory defined on a non-dynamical background-metric. The measure then induces an action with 4…
We review our most recent results in formulating gauge theories in the presence of a background field on the basis of symmetry arguments only. In particular we show how one can gain full control over the dependence on the background field…
Effective field theories describing gravity coupled to matter are investigated, allowing for operators of arbitrary mass dimension. Terms violating local Lorentz and diffeomorphism invariance while preserving internal gauge symmetries are…
We study the non-linear background field redefinitions arising at the quantum level in a spontaneously broken effective gauge field theory. The non-linear field redefinitions are crucial for the symmetric (i.e. fulfilling all the relevant…
We show that in a spontaneously broken effective gauge field theory, quantized in a general background $R_\xi$-gauge, also the background fields undergo a non-linear (albeit background-gauge invariant) field redefinition induced by…
We apply the new quantization scheme outlined in Phys. Rev. D102 (2020) 125001 to explore the influence which quantum vacuum fluctuations of the spacetime metric exert on the universes of Quantum Einstein Gravity, which is regarded an…
The goal of this article is to present an introduction to loop quantum gravity -a background independent, non-perturbative approach to the problem of unification of general relativity and quantum physics, based on a quantum theory of…
Intuitively speaking, a classical field theory is background-independent if the structure required to make sense of its equations is itself subject to dynamical evolution, rather than being imposed ab initio. The aim of this paper is to…
Recently, uniqueness theorems were constructed for the representation used in Loop Quantum Gravity. We explore the existence of alternate representations by weakening the assumptions of the so called LOST uniqueness theorem. The weakened…
In this article we discuss an implementation of renormalization group ideas to spin foam models, where there is no a priori length scale with which to define the flow. In the context of the continuum limit of these models, we show how the…
Effective gravitational field theories with background fields break local Lorentz symmetry and diffeomorphism invariance. Examples include Chern-Simons gravity, massive gravity, and the Standard-Model Extension (SME). The physical…
The application of quantum theory to gravity is beset with many technical and conceptual problems. After a short tour d'horizon of recent attempts to master those problems by the introduction of new approaches, we show that the aim, a…
We study the background scale independence in single-metric approximation to the functional renormalization group equation (FRGE) for quantum gravity and show that it is possible to formulate it without using higher-derivative gauge fixing…