Related papers: Shape Space Methods for Quantum Cosmological Trian…
Relational particle models are of value in the absolute versus relative motion debate. They are also analogous to the dynamical formulation of general relativity, and as such are useful for investigating conceptual strategies proposed for…
In scaled relational particle mechanics, only relative times, relative angles and relative separations are meaningful. It arose in the study of the absolute versus relative motion debate. It has then turned out to be a useful toy model of…
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…
I investigate useful shape quantities for the classical and quantum mechanics of the relational quadrilateral in 2-d. This is relational in the sense that only relative times, relative ratios of separations and relative angles are…
Relational particle mechanics is useful for modelling whole-universe issues such as quantum cosmology or the problem of time in quantum gravity, including some aspects outside the reach of comparably complex minisuperspace models. In this…
This paper considers passing from the usual $\mathbb{R}^d$ model of absolute space to $\mathbb{S}^d$ at the level of relational particle models. Both approaches' $d = 1$ cases are rather simpler than their $d \geq 2$ cases, with $N$…
The method of four-dimensional Causal Dynamical Triangulations provides a background-independent definition of the sum over geometries in quantum gravity, in the presence of a positive cosmological constant. We present the evidence…
In Euclidean relational particle mechanics, only relative times, relative angles and relative separations are meaningful. Barbour--Bertotti (1982) theory is of this form and can be viewed as a recovery of (a portion of) Newtonian mechanics…
What can we learn about quantum gravity from a simple toy model, without actually quantizing it? The toy model consists of a finite number of point particles, coupled to three dimensional Einstein gravity. It has finitely many physical…
Relational particle mechanics models (RPM's) are useful models for the problem of time in quantum gravity and other foundational issues in quantum cosmology. Some concrete examples of scalefree RPM's have already been studied, but it is the…
We describe the idea of studying quantum gravity by means of dynamical triangulations and give examples of its implementation in 2, 3 and 4 space time dimensions. For $d=2$ we consider the generic hermitian 1-matrix model. We introduce the…
The study of toy models in loop quantum gravity (LQG), defined as truncations of the full theory, is relevant to both the development of the LQG phenomenology, in cosmology and astrophysics, and the progress towards the resolution of the…
We investigate quantum cosmological models in an n-dimensional anisotropic universe in the presence of a massless scalar field. Our basic inspiration comes from Chodos and Detweiler's classical model which predicts an interesting behaviour…
We argue that theories of quantum gravity constructed with the help of (Causal) Dynamical Triangulations have given us the most informative, quantitative models to date of quantum spacetime. Most importantly, these are derived dynamically…
The program of understanding Shape Theory layer by layer topologically and geometrically -- proposed in Part I -- is now addressed for 4 points in 1-$d$. Topological shape space graphs are far more complex here, whereas metric shape spaces…
We develop a new perspective on the discretization of the phase space structure of gravity in 2+1 dimensions as a piecewise-flat geometry in 2 spatial dimensions. Starting from a subdivision of the continuum geometric and phase space…
A holistic view of the cosmological appearance and development of space is obtained by studying space as a spherically closed surface of a 4-sphere in a zero energy balance between motion and gravitation. Such an approach re-establishes…
Suppose that the initial triangle formed by the three moving masses of the three-body problem is similar to the triangle formed at some later time. We derive a simple integral formula for the overall rotation relating the two triangles. The…
We study a model of scalar quantum field theory in which space-time is a discrete set of points obtained by repeatedly subdividing a triangle into three triangles at the centroid. By integrating out the field variable at the centroid we get…
We provide detailed evidence for the claim that nonperturbative quantum gravity, defined through state sums of causal triangulated geometries, possesses a large-scale limit in which the dimension of spacetime is four and the dynamics of the…