Related papers: Spacetime causal structure and dimension from hori…
In general relativity, the causal structure between events is dynamical, but it is definite and observer-independent; events are point-like and the membership of an event A in the future or past light-cone of an event B is an…
Within the causal set approach to quantum gravity, a discrete analog of a spacelike region is a set of unrelated elements, or an antichain. In the continuum approximation of the theory, a moment-of-time hypersurface is well represented by…
Space-time symmetries and internal quantum symmetries can be placed on equal footing in a hyperspin geometry. Four-dimensional classical space-time emerges as a result of a decoherence that disentangles the quantum and the space-time…
Cosmology in extended theories of gravity is considered assuming the Palatini variational principle, for which the metric and connection are independent variables. The field equations are derived to linear order in perturbations about the…
The full causal ladder of spacetimes is constructed, and their updated main properties are developed. Old concepts and alternative definitions of each level of the ladder are revisited, with emphasis in minimum hypotheses. The implications…
We consider the causal structure of generalized uncharged McVittie spacetimes with increasing central mass $m (t)$ and positive Hubble factor $H (t)$. Under physically reasonable conditions, namely, a big bang singularity in the past, a…
Gravitation is described in the context of a dilatonic theory that is conformally related to general relativity. All dimensionless ratios of fundamental dimensional quantities, e.g. particle masses and the Planck mass, as well as the…
This paper clarifies some aspects of Lorentzian topology change, and it extends to a wider class of spacetimes previous results of Geroch and Tipler that show that topology change is only to be had at a price. The scenarios studied here are…
The group of conformal diffeomorphisms and the group of causal automorphisms on two-dimensional globally hyperbolic spacetimes are clarified. It is shown that if spacetimes have non-compact Cauchy surfaces, then the groups are subgroups of…
The causal structure is a quintessential element of continuum spacetime physics and needs to be properly encoded in a theory of Lorentzian quantum gravity. Established spin foam (and tensorial group field theory (TGFT)) models mostly work…
A number of techniques in Lorentzian geometry, such as those used in the proofs of singularity theorems, depend on certain smooth coverings retaining interesting global geometric properties, including causal ones. In this note we give…
The nature of the change in perspective that accompanies the proposal of a unified physical theory deriving from the single dimension of time is elaborated. On expressing a temporal interval in a multi-dimensional form, via a direct…
In general relativity, time functions are crucial objects whose existence and properties are intimately tied to the causal structure of a spacetime and also to the initial value formulation of the Einstein equations. In this work we…
Based on the recent work \cite{PII} we put forward a new type of transformation for Lorentzian manifolds characterized by mapping every causal future-directed vector onto a causal future-directed vector. The set of all such transformations,…
We develop a notion of causal order on a generic manifold as independent of the underlying differential and topological structure. We show that sufficiently regular causal orders can be recovered from a distinguished algebra of sets, which…
Data-driven astrophysics currently relies on the detection and characterisation of correlations between objects' properties, which are then used to test physical theories that make predictions for them. This process fails to utilise…
Why is the manifold topology in a spacetime taken for granted? Why do we prefer to use Riemann open balls as basic-open sets, while there also exists a Lorentz metric? Which topology is a best candidate for a spacetime; a topology…
We study the emergence of Minkowski space-time from a causal network. Differently from previous approaches, we require the network to be topologically homogeneous, so that the metric is derived from pure event-counting. Emergence from…
Causal sets are locally finite, partially ordered sets (posets), which are considered as discrete models of spacetimes. On the one hand, causal sets corresponding to a spacetime manifold are commonly generated with a random process called…
We show a general theorem of existence of temporal foliations in a general causal set, under mild constraints. Then we study automorphisms of infinite causal sets (which satisfy further requirements) and show that they fall under one of two…