Related papers: On Coupling NEC-Violating Matter to Gravity
No experimental evidence exists, to date, whether or not the gravitational field must be quantised. Theoretical arguments in favour of quantisation are inconclusive. The most straightforward alternative to quantum gravity, a coupling…
A fundamental ingredient in wormhole physics is the presence of exotic matter, which involves the violation of the null energy condition. Although a plethora of wormhole solutions have been explored in the literature, it is useful to find…
We combine old and new quantum field theoretic arguments to show that any theory of stable or metastable higher spin particles can be coupled to gravity only when the gravity sector has a stringy structure. Metastable higher spin particles,…
We discuss some fundamental issues underlying gravitational physics and point out some of the main shortcomings of Einstein's General Relativity. In particular, after taking into account the role of the two main objects of relativistic…
A one-parameter deformation of Einstein?Hilbert gravity with an inverse Riemann curvature term is derived as the classical limit of quantum gravity compatible with an accelerating universe. This result is based on the investigation of…
If gravitons are super-strong interacting particles and the low-temperature graviton background exists, the basic cosmological conjecture about the Dopplerian nature of redshifts may be false. In this case, a full magnitude of cosmological…
We discuss quadratic gravity where terms quadratic in the curvature tensor are included in the action. After reviewing the corresponding field equations, we analyze in detail the physical propagating modes in some specific backgrounds.…
We argue there is an interesting triple-scaling limit of quantum gravity, namely when Planck's constant scales to infinity while Newton's constant and the speed of light tend to zero, keeping fixed the gravitational coupling $G_N\,c^{-4}$…
We suggest that the correspondence between gauge theories strongly coupled in the infrared and their low energy effective theories may be probed by introducing topologically non-trivial background scalar fields. We argue that one loop…
Consider the interior of a black hole or the very early universe: matter is so densely localized that neither the effects of gravity nor those of quantum theory can be ignored. But this entails that neither general relativity nor quantum…
The Einstein equivalence principle is certainly a key element in the development of new enhanced theories of gravity. Although being an important building block in Einstein's general relativity, theoretically predicted violations of its…
Field theories which violate the null energy condition (NEC) are of interest for the solution of the cosmological singularity problem and for models of cosmological dark energy with the equation of state parameter $w<-1$. We discuss the…
String theory, if it describes nature, is probably strongly coupled. As a result, one might despair of making any statements about the theory. In the framework of a set of clearly spelled out assumptions, we show that this is not…
In previous papers I expounded non-linear Schrodingerist quantum mechanics as a solution of the Measurement Problem. Here I show that NLQM is compatible with Einstein's theory of General Relativity. The extension to curved space-times…
Taking a thermodynamic perspective, we study the weak gravity conjecture in the context of 4D Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton theory. We find closed-form expressions for the corrected thermodynamic quantities in the presence of four-derivative…
Black holes are the simplest objects in the universe. They correspond to extreme deformations of spacetime geometry, and can exist even devoid of matter. In general relativity, (electro)vacuum black holes are uniquely determined by their…
We examine the compatibility of the Einstein minimally coupled self-interacting scalar field theory with the local tests of gravity. We find that apart from the trivial case of the Schwarzschild-de Sitter solution with constant scalar field…
In order to clarify why the zero-point energy associated with the vacuum fluctuations cannot be a candidate for the dark energy in the universe, a comparison with the Casimir effect is analyzed in some detail. A principle of epistemology is…
It has been known long time ago that the low energy dynamics of open-strings is described by non-abelian gauge theories in the same way that the low energy effective description of closed strings is governed by Einstein's gravity. In this…
We review the status of recent investigations on validating the gauge-gravity duality conjecture through numerical simulations of strongly coupled maximally supersymmetric thermal gauge theories. In the simplest setting, the gauge-gravity…