Related papers: Compact phase space, cosmological constant, discre…
A universe much like the (Euclidean) de Sitter space-time appears as background geometry in the causal dynamical triangulation (CDT) regularization of quantum gravity. We study the geometry of such universes which appear in the path…
We review recent efforts to construct gravitational theories on discrete space-times, usually referred to as the ``consistent discretization'' approach. The resulting theories are free of constraints at the canonical level and therefore…
We consider cosmological models in which a homogeneous isotropic universe is embedded as a 3+1 dimensional surface into a 4+1 dimensional manifold. The size of the extra dimension depends on time. It is small compared to the size of the…
The geometry of the $q$-deformed line is studied. A real differential calculus is introduced and the associated algebra of forms represented on a Hilbert space. It is found that there is a natural metric with an associated linear connection…
A simple model is introduced in which the cosmological constant is interpreted as a true Casimir effect on a scalar field filling the universe (e.g. $\mathbf{R} \times \mathbf{T}^p\times \mathbf{T}^q$, $\mathbf{R} \times \mathbf{T}^p\times…
We consider new cosmological solutions with a collapsing, an intermediate and an expanding phase. The boundary between the expanding (collapsing) phase and the intermediate phase is seen by comoving observers as a cosmological past (future)…
We outline the evaluation of the cosmological constant in the framework of the standard field-theoretical treatment of vacuum energy and discuss the relation between the vacuum energy problem and the gauge-group spontaneous symmetry…
The properties of quantum mechanics with a discrete phase space are studied. The minimum uncertainty states are found, and these states become the Gaussian wave packets in the continuum limit. With a suitably chosen Hamiltonian that gives…
A theory in which points, lines, areas and volumes are on on the same footing is investigated. All those geometric objects form a 16-dimensional manifold, called C-space, which generalizes spacetime. In such higher dimensional space…
Chern-Simons formulation of the 2+1 dimensional Einstein gravity with negative cosmological constant is investigated when the spacetime has the topology ${\bf R}\times T^{2}$. The physical phase space is shown to be a direct product of two…
Cosmology is most typically analyzed using standard co-moving coordinates, in which the galaxies are (on average, up to presumably small peculiar velocities) "at rest", while "space" is expanding. But this is merely a specific coordinate…
We present a generally covariant approach to quantum mechanics in which generalized positions, momenta and time variables are treated as coordinates on a fundamental "phase-spacetime." We show that this covariant starting point makes…
We explain that when quantising phase spaces with varying symplectic structures, the bundle of quantum Hilbert spaces over the parameter space has a natural unitary connection. We then focus on symplectic vector spaces and their fermionic…
The phase space of a compact, irreducible, simply connected, Riemannian symmetric space admits a natural family of K\"ahler polarizations parametrized by the upper half plane $S$. Using this family, geometric quantization, including the…
In this paper we perform systematic investigation of all possible solutions with static compact extra dimensions and expanding three-dimensional subspace (``our Universe''). Unlike previous papers, we consider extra-dimensional subspace to…
In her recent work, Dittrich generalized Rovelli's idea of partial observables to construct Dirac observables for constrained systems to the general case of an arbitrary first class constraint algebra with structure functions rather than…
I give a brief informal introduction to the idea and tests of large extra dimensions, focusing on the case in which the space-time manifold has a direct product structure. I then describe some attractive implementations in which the…
Witten has presented an argument for the vanishing of the cosmological constant in 2+1 dimensions. This argument is crucially tied to the specific properties of (2+1)-dimensional gravity. We argue that this reasoning can be deconstructed to…
The concept of deformation of Riemannian geometry is reviewed, with applications to gravitation and cosmology. Starting with an analysis of the cosmological constant problem, it is shown that space-times are deformable in the sense of local…
In this contribution, we study spacetimes of cosmological interest, without making any symmetry assumptions. We prove a rigid Hawking singularity theorem for positive cosmological constant, which sharpens known results. In particular, it…