Related papers: The physical observer II: Gauge and diff anomalies
Three of the big puzzles of theoretical physics are the following: (i) There is apparently no time evolution in the dynamics of quantum general relativity, because the allowed quantum states must obey the Hamiltonian constraint. (ii) During…
Gravitational decoherence (GD) refers to the effects of gravity in actuating the classical appearance of a quantum system. Because the underlying processes involve issues in general relativity (GR), quantum field theory (QFT) and quantum…
We present an overview on relational observables in gravity mainly from a loop quantum gravity perspective. The gauge group of general relativity is the diffeomorphism group of the underlying manifold. Consequently, general relativity is a…
A characteristical property of a classical physical theory is that the observables are real functions taking an exact outcome on every (pure) state; in a quantum theory, at the contrary, a given observable on a given state can take several…
We propose a new framework of quantum field theory for an arbitrary observer in curved spacetime, defined in the spacetime region in which each point can both receive a signal from and send a signal to the observer. Multiple motivations for…
We investigate the fate of diffeomorphisms when the radial gauge is imposed in canonical general relativity. As shown elsewhere, the radial gauge is closely related to the observer's observables. These observables are invariant under a…
The requirement that physical phenomena associated with gravitational collapse should be duly reconciled with the postulates of quantum mechanics implies that at a Planckian scale our world is not 3+1 dimensional. Rather, the observable…
We emphasize that a specific aspect of quantum gravity is the absence of a super-selection rule that prevents a linear superposition of different gravitational charges. As an immediate consequence, we obtain a tiny, but observable,…
In theories with chiral couplings, one of the important consistency requirements is that of the cancellation of a gauge anomaly. In particular, this is one of the conditions imposed on the hypercharges in the Standard Model. However,…
We outline a field theory on a multifractal spacetime. The measure in the action is characterized by a varying Hausdorff dimension and logarithmic oscillations governed by a fundamental physical length. A fine hierarchy of length scales…
Although time is one of our most intuitive physical concepts, its understanding at the fundamental level is still an open question in physics. For instance, time in quantum mechanics and general relativity are two distinct and incompatible…
After revealing difficulties of the standard time-dependent perturbation theory in quantum mechanics mainly from the viewpoint of practical calculation, we propose a new quasi-canonical perturbation theory. In the new theory, the dynamics…
Pure gravity and gauge theories in two dimensions are shown to be special cases of a much more general class of field theories each of which is characterized by a Poisson structure on a finite dimensional target space. A general scheme for…
It is shown that all possible gravitational, gauge and other interactions experienced by particles in ordinary d-dimensions (one-time) can be described in the language of two-time physics in a spacetime with d+2 dimensions. This is obtained…
Local observables in (perturbative) quantum gravity are notoriously hard to define, since the gauge symmetry of gravity -- diffeomorphisms -- moves points on the manifold. In particular, this is a problem for backgrounds of high symmetry…
Modern astronomical observations in cosmology provide increasingly strong evidence that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating. Explanations of the cosmic acceleration within the framework of general relativity use the hypothesis…
These lectures on anomalies are relatively self-contained and intended for graduate students who are familiar with the basics of quantum field theory. We begin with several derivations of the abelian anomaly: anomalous transformation of the…
Till now, the foundation of quantum physics is still mysterious. To explore the mysteries in the foundation of quantum physics, people always take it for granted that quantum processes must be some types of fields/objects on a rigid space.…
In this paper, we study implications of the geometrical nature of space- time for some of the basic tenets of quantum mechanics. That is, we study two different implications of the principle of general covariance; first we quantize a…
Local gauge symmetries reduce to the identity on the observables, as well as on the physical states (apart from reflexes of the local gauge group topology) and therefore their use in Quantum Field Theory (QFT) asks for a justification of…