Related papers: Limits on Spacetime Foam
A simple model of spacetime foam, made by $N$ wormholes in a semiclassical approximation, is taken under examination. We show that the qualitative behaviour of the fluctuation of the metric conjectured by Wheeler is here reproduced.
Future large ensembles of time delay lenses have the potential to provide interesting cosmological constraints complementary to those of other methods. In a flat universe with constant w including a Planck prior, LSST time delay…
In the last decade or so there has been debate over the possibility that the fuzzy quantum nature of spacetime might decohere wavefronts emanating from very distant sources. Consequences of that could be "blurred" or "faded" images of…
Perhaps standard effective field theory arguments are right, and vacuum fluctuations really do generate a huge cosmological constant. I show that if one does not assume homogeneity and an arrow of time at the Planck scale, a very large…
The circumgalactic medium (CGM) is poorly constrained at the sub-parsec scales relevant to turbulent energy dissipation and regulation of multi-phase structure. Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are sensitive to small-scale plasma density…
There have been observations, first from the MAGIC Telescope (July 2005) and quite recently (September 2008) from the FERMI Satellite Telescope, on non-simultaneous arrival of high-energy photons from distant celestial sources. In each…
We analyze the limits that quantum mechanics imposes on the accuracy to which $(4+n)$-dimensional spacetime geometry can be measured. Using physics of computation and light sheet concept we derive explicit expressions for quantum…
We derive strong observational limits on any possible large-scale spatial variation in the values of physical 'constants' whose space-time evolution is driven by a scalar field. The limits are imposed by the isotropy of the microwave…
Fluctuations in sky maps of the galaxy redshifts, dubbed as angular redshift fluctuations (ARF), contain precise information about the growth rate of structures and the nature of gravity in the Universe. Specifically, ARF constrain the…
Numerous theories extending beyond the standard model of particle physics predict the existence of bosons that could constitute the dark matter (DM) permeating the universe. In the standard halo model (SHM) of galactic dark matter the…
It is shown that high-energy astrophysics can provide information on the small-scale structure of spacetime.
The description of spacetime is an fundamental problem of cosmology. We explain why the current assignments of spacetime geometries for $\Omega_k$ of the Friedmann-Lema\^{\i}tre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) model are probably incorrect and…
Quantum vacuum fluctuations tend to be strongly anti-correlated, which reduces their observable effects. However, time dependence can upset the cancellation of these anti-correlated fluctuations and greatly enhance their effects. This form…
We describe how a model of effective interactions between quantum fluctuations under certain assumptions can be constructed in a way so that the large-scale limit gives an effective theory that matches general relativity in vacuum regions.…
High-precision cosmological probes have revealed a small but significant tension between the parameters measured with different techniques, among which there is one based on time delays in gravitational lenses. We discuss a new way of using…
Quantum fluctuations of the gravitational field in the early Universe, amplified by inflation, produce a primordial gravitational-wave background across a broad frequency band. We derive constraints on the spectrum of this gravitational…
Suppose the usual description of spacetime as a 4-dimensional manifold with a Lorentzian metric breaks down at Planck energies. Can we still construct sensible theoretical models of the universe? Are they testable? Do they lead to a…
The Lamb shift results from the coupling of an atom to vacuum fluctuations of quantum fields, so corrections are expected to arise when the spacetime is curved since the vacuum fluctuations are modified by the presence of spacetime…
The sky distribution of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) has been intensively studied by various groups for more than two decades. Most of these studies test the isotropy of GRBs based on their sky number density distribution. In this work we…
Many quantum gravity theories imply that the vacuum is filled with virtual black holes. This paper explores the process in which high energy photons interact with virtual black holes and decay into gravitons and photons of lower energy. The…