Related papers: On Background Independence
The FKG theorem says that the POSITIVE LATTICE CONDITION, an easily checkable hypothesis which holds for many natural families of events, implies POSITIVE ASSOCIATION, a very useful property. Thus there is a natural and useful theory of…
The concept of a particle is ambiguous in quantum field theory. It is generally agreed that particles depend not only on spacetime, but also on coordinates used to parametrise spacetime points. One of us has in contrast proposed a…
A new gauge theory of gravity is presented. The theory is constructed in a flat background spacetime and employs gauge fields to ensure that all relations between physical quantities are independent of the positions and orientations of the…
We study a free boundary problem on the lattice whose scaling limit is a harmonic free boundary problem with a discontinuous Hamiltonian. We find an explicit formula for the Hamiltonian, prove the solutions are unique, and prove that the…
We consider Hilbert's problem of the axioms of Physics at a qualitative or conceptual level. This issue is more pressing than ever as we seek to understand how both General Relativity and quantum theory could emerge from some deeper theory…
While philosophy of science is the study of problems of knowledge concerning science in general, there also exists - or should exist - a '' philosophy in science'' directed at finding out in what ways our actual scientific knowledge may…
We discuss some methodological aspects of the relation between physics and metaphysics by dealing specifically with the case of non-relativistic quantum mechanics. Our main claim is that current attempts to productively integrate quantum…
In the framework of the field theory it is shown that a time (viewed as a scalar temporal field) is an internal property of the physical system, which defines its causal structure and evolution. A new concept of internal time allows to…
A mathematical definition of classical causality over discrete spacetime dynamics is formulated. The approach is background free and permits a definition of causality in a precise way whenever the spacetime dynamics permits. It gives a…
Goal of this review is to introduce the algebraic approach to quantum field theory on curved backgrounds. Based on a set of axioms, first written down by Haag and Kastler, this method consists of a two-step procedure. In the first one, a…
We present a solution to the time discontinuity paradox in rotating reference frames by postulating that time is periodic. A kinematic restriction is enforced that requires the discontinuity to be an integral number of the periodicity of…
We propose a formulation of the holographic principle, suitable for a background independent quantum theory of cosmology. It is stated as a relationship between the flow of quantum information and the causal structure of a quantum…
Mach's principle is surely one of those tantalizingly beautiful concepts in physics which remain elusive. Though General Relativity (GR) was conceived in the spirit of realizing it, the theory failed to fulfill this expectation. Here a…
The equivalence postulate approach to quantum mechanics entails a derivation of quantum mechanics from a fundamental geometrical principle. Underlying the formalism there exists a basic cocycle condition, which is invariant under…
All differences between the role of space and time in nature are explained by proposing the principles in which none of the spacetime coordinates has an {\it a priori} special role. Spacetime is treated as a non-dynamical manifold, with a…
Independence -- the study of what is relevant to a given problem of reasoning -- has received an increasing attention from the AI community. In this paper, we consider two basic forms of independence, namely, a syntactic one and a semantic…
Time-symmetric cosmological theories, in which the initial and final states are arranged to have similar features or are independently fixed, have been quite extensively discussed in the literature. However, a more general and perhaps more…
A recently proposed pregeometric auxiliary vector mediated gauge theory is studied in its canonical domain, by performing the Legendre transform on a curved background and by considering its covariant phase space, with further application…
Mimetic gravity has emerged as a compelling extension of General Relativity (GR), originally motivated by the attempt to isolate the conformal degree of freedom of the gravitational field. By reparametrizing the physical metric in terms of…
We review the recent literature on modified theories of gravity in the Palatini approach. After discussing the motivations that lead to consider alternatives to Einstein's theory and to treat the metric and the connection as independent…