Related papers: Background-Independence
We study the model theory of vector spaces with a bilinear form over a fixed field. For finite fields this can be, and has been, done in the classical framework of full first-order logic. For infinite fields we need different logical…
We investigate a lattice scalar field theory in the presence of a bias favouring the establishment of an energy current, as a model for stationary nonequilibrium processes at low temperature in a non-integrable system. There is a transition…
Exploring the similarities between the Chen \emph{et al.} approach, where physical and gauge degrees of freedom of the gauge potential are explicitly separated, and the background field method, we provide an alternative point of view to the…
5D superconformal theories involve vacuum valleys characterized in the simplest case by the vacuum expectation value of a real scalar field. If it is nonzero, conformal invariance is spontaneously broken and the theory is not…
Within the decoherence theory we investigate the physical background of the condition of the separability (diagonalizability in noncorrelated basis) of the interaction Hamiltonian of the composite system, "system plus environment". It…
The theory of fields that are equipped with a countably infinite family of commuting derivations is not companionable; but if the axiom is added whereby the characteristic of the fields is zero, then the resulting theory is companionable.…
The rules of d-separation provide a framework for deriving conditional independence facts from model structure. However, this theory only applies to simple directed graphical models. We introduce relational d-separation, a theory for…
We formulate semi-classical field theory as an approximate decoherence-free-subspace of a finite-dimensional quantum-gravity hilbert space. A complementarity construction can be realized as a unitary transformation which changes the…
In this paper free quantum theories are derived solely from their underlying symmetry group without reference to a Lagrangean or classical physics and then interactions are introduced by making use of automorphism of the symmetry algebra.…
A complete first-order theory is equational if every definable set is a Boolean combination of instances of equations, that is, of formulae such that the family of finite intersections of instances has the descending chain condition.…
We use the in-in or Schwinger-Keldysh formalism to explore the construction and interpretation of effective field theories for time-dependent systems evolving out of equilibrium. Starting with a simple model consisting of a heavy and a…
From one point of view in the quantum theory of fields, free quantum fields are uniquely determined, not by field equations, but by the transformations of the field and the annihilation and creation operators from which the field is…
The challenges posed by the development of field theories, both classical and quantum, force us to question their most basic and foundational ideas like the role and origin of space-time, the meaning of physical states, etc. Among them the…
Does information play a significant role in the foundations of physics? Information is the abstraction that allows us to refer to the states of systems when we choose to ignore the systems themselves. This is only possible in very…
One of the most important issues in quantum gravity is to identify its semi-classical regime. First the issue is to define for we mean by a semi-classical theory of quantum gravity, then we would like to use it to extract physical…
String theory has not even come close to a complete formulation after half a century of intense research. On the other hand, a number of features of the theory suggest that the theory, once completed, may be a final theory. It is argued in…
We review quantum causal histories starting with their interpretations as a quantum field theory on a causal set and a quantum geometry. We discuss the difficulties that background independent theories based on quantum geometry encounter in…
Effective classicality of a property of a quantum system can be defined using redundancy of its record in the environment. This allows quantum physics to approximate the situation encountered in the classical world: The information about a…
There is debate as to whether quantum field theory is, at bottom, a quantum theory of fields or particles. One can take a field approach to the theory, using wave functionals over field configurations, or a particle approach, using wave…
We develop a theory for describing composite objects in physics. These can be static objects, such as tables, or things that happen in spacetime (such as a region of spacetime with fields on it regarded as being composed of smaller such…