Related papers: Exotic Smoothness in Four Dimensions and Euclidean…
Since the first work on exotic smoothness in physics, it was folklore to assume a direct influence of exotic smoothness to quantum gravity. In the second paper, we calculate the "smoothness structure" part of the path integral in quantum…
It is well known that in four or more dimensions, there exist exotic manifolds; manifolds that are homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to each other. More precisely, exotic manifolds are the same topological manifold but have inequivalent…
Since the first work on exotic smoothness in physics, it was folklore to assume a direct influence of exotic smoothness to quantum gravity. Thus, the negative result of Duston (arXiv:0911.4068) was a surprise. A closer look into the…
Over the last two decades, many unexpected relations between exotic smoothness, e.g. exotic $\mathbb{R}^{4}$, and quantum field theory were found. Some of these relations are rooted in a relation to superstring theory and quantum gravity.…
The problem of possible astrophysical consequences of the existence of exotic differential structures on manifolds is discussed. It is argued that corrections to the curvature of the form of a source like terms should be expected in the…
We follow the point of view that superstring theory, as the theory of quantum gravity in the number of spacetime dimensions bigger than 4, serves as mathematics for both, 4 dimensional QG and exotic smoothness on open 4-manifolds.…
Model-theoretic aspects of exotic smoothness were studied long ago uncovering unexpected relations to noncommutative spaces and quantum theory. Some of these relations were worked out in detail in later work. An important point in the…
We investigate how exotic differential structures may reveal themselves in particle physics. The analysis is based on the A. Connes' construction of the standard model. It is shown that, if one of the copies of the spacetime manifold is…
We give arguments that exotic smooth structures on compact and noncompact 4-manifolds are essential for some approaches to quantum gravity. We rely on the recently developed model-theoretic approach to exotic smoothness in dimension four.…
Recent discoveries in differential topology are reviewed in light of their possible implications for spacetime models and related subjects in theoretical physics. Although not often noted, a particular smoothness (differentiability)…
We review recent developments in differential topology with special concern for their possible significance to physical theories, especially general relativity. In particular we are concerned here with the discovery of the existence of…
The essential role played by differentiable structures in physics is reviewed in light of recent mathematical discoveries that topologically trivial space-time models, especially the simplest one, ${\bf R^4}$, possess a rich multiplicity of…
Recent work on exotic smooth R^4's, i.e. topological R^4 with exotic differential structure, shows the connection of 4-exotics with the codimension-1 foliations of $S^{3}$, SU(2) WZW models and twisted K-theory $K_{H}(S^{3})$, $H\in…
We construct series of examples of exotic smooth structures on compact locally symmetric spaces of noncompact type. In particular, we obtain higher rank examples, which do not support Riemannian metric of nonpositive curvature. The examples…
Recent models for discrete euclidean quantum gravity incorporate a sum over simplicial triangulations. We describe an algorithm for simulating such models in general dimensions. As illustration we show results from simulations in four…
We briefly overview the development of Euclidean quantum gravity in four dimensions regarded as a branch of statistical mechanics of discretized random manifolds.
Dynamical triangulations of four-dimensional Euclidean quantum gravity give rise to an interesting, numerically accessible model of quantum gravity. We give a simple introduction to the model and discuss two particularly important issues.…
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…
Four-dimensional (4D) simplicial quantum gravity coupled to both scalar fields (N_X) and gauge fields (N_A) has been studied using Monte-Carlo simulations. The matter dependence of the string susceptibility exponent gamma^{(4)} is…
4-manifolds have special topological properties which can be used to get a different view on quantum mechanics. One important property (connected with exotic smoothness) is the natural appearance of 3-manifold wild embeddings (Alexanders…