Related papers: Beables/Observables in Classical and Quantum Gravi…
Theoretical descriptions of observable quantities in cosmological perturbation theory should be independent of coordinate systems. This statement is often referred to as gauge-invariance of observable quantities, and the sanity of their…
Recent advances in semiclassical gravity, both in our understanding of the gravitational path integral and the algebraic structure of a gravitating subregion, rely on the presence of an observer to obtain a nontrivial Hilbert space for…
This paper considers the relevance of the concepts of observability and computability in physical theory. Observability is related to verifiability which is essential for effective computing and as physical systems are computational systems…
Is there a version of the notions of "state" and "observable" wide enough to apply naturally and in a covariant manner to relativistic systems? I discuss here a tentative answer.
In gauge theories, observable quantities have to be gauge-invariant. In general, this requires composite operators, which usually have substantially different properties, e.g. masses, than the elementary particles. Theories with a Higgs…
We review some work done with C. Rovelli on the use of the eigenvalues of the Dirac operator on a curved spacetime as dynamical variables, the main motivation coming from their invariance under the action of diffeomorphisms. The eigenvalues…
In deterministic theories, one can start from a set of ontological states to formulate the dynamical laws, but these may not be directly observable. Observable are only equivalence classes of states, and these will span a basis of…
In a companion paper we studied field theory in the presence of a physical observer with quantum dynamics. Here we describe the most striking consequence of this assumption: new gauge and diff anomalies arise. The relevant cocycles depend…
Full general relativity is almost certainly 'chaotic'. We argue that this entails a notion of nonintegrability: a generic general relativistic model, at least when coupled to cosmologically interesting matter, likely possesses neither…
In [1,2] we established and discussed the algebra of observables for 2+1 gravity at both the classical and quantum level. Here our treatment broadens and extends previous results to any genus $g$ with a systematic discussion of the centre…
Local operators are the basic observables in quantum field theory which encode the physics observed by a local experimentalist. However, when gravity is dynamical, diffeomorphism symmetries are gauged which apparently obstructs a sensible…
Since the advent of quantum mechanics we have mainly been concerned with its predictions from the perspective of an external observer. This is in strong contrast to the theory of general relativity, where the physics is governed by the…
A subclass of dynamical semigroups induced by the interaction of a quantum system with an environment is introduced. Such semigroups lead to the selection of a stable subalgebra of effective observables. The structure of this subalgebra is…
We make a proposal for gauge-invariant observables in perturbative quantum gravity in cosmological spacetimes, building on the recent work of Brunetti et al. [JHEP 08 (2016) 032]. These observables are relational, and are obtained by…
Physical systems are characterized by their structure and dynamics. But the physical laws only express relations, and their symmetries allow any possible relational structure to be also possible in a different parametrization or basis of…
The covariance of loop quantum gravity studies of spherically symmetric space-times has recently been questioned. This is a reasonable worry, given that they are formulated in terms of slicing-dependent variables. We show explicitly that…
This is an up-to-date survey of the p-mechanical construction (see funct-an/9405002, quant-ph/9610016, math-ph/0007030, quant-ph/0212101, quant-ph/0303142), which is a consistent physical theory suitable for a simultaneous description of…
We present a new quantum algebraic description of an electron localized in space-time. Positions in space and time, mass and Clifford generators are defined as quantum operators. Commutation relations and relativistic shifts under frame…
The eigenvalues of the Dirac operator on a curved spacetime are diffeomorphism-invariant functions of the geometry. They form an infinite set of ``observables'' for general relativity. Recent work of Chamseddine and Connes suggests that…
It is well known that general relativity (GR) does not possess any non-trivial local (in a precise standard sense) and diffeomorphism invariant observables. We propose a generalized notion of local observables, which retain the most…