Related papers: Unitarity issues in higher derivative field theori…
We show that Minkowskian non-local quantum field theories are not unitary. We consider a simple one loop diagram for a scalar non-local field and show that the imaginary part of the corresponding complex amplitude is not given by Cutkosky…
I discuss the ontological assumptions and implications of General Relativity. I maintain that General Relativity is a theory about gravitational fields, not about space-time. The latter is a more basic ontological category, that emerges…
A general class of quantum improved stellar models with interiors composed of non-interacting ('dust') particles is obtained and analyzed in a framework compatible with asymptotic safety. First, the effective exterior, based on the Quantum…
Unitarity is a pillar of quantum theory. Nevertheless, it is also a source of several of its conceptual problems. We note that in a world where measurements are relational, as is the case in gravitation, quantum mechanics exhibits a…
We point out that spacetime singularities play a useful role in gravitational theories by eliminating unphysical solutions. In particular, we argue that any modification of general relativity which is completely nonsingular cannot have a…
The existence of a small, non-zero cosmological constant is one of the major puzzles in fundamental physics. Naively, quantum field theory arguments would imply a cosmological constant which is up to 10$^{120}$ times larger than the…
Cosmological observations allow the possibility that dark energy is caused by phantom fields. These fields typically lead to the occurrence of singularities in the late Universe. We review here the status of phantom singularities and their…
While Quantum Gravity remains elusive and Quantum Field Theory retains the interpretational difficulties of Quantum Mechanics, we have introduced an alternate approach to the unification of particles, fields, space and time, suggesting that…
The IR/UV mixing and the violation of unitarity are two of the most intriguing aspects of noncommutative quantum field theories. In this paper the relation between these two phenomena is explained and established. We start out by showing…
The Vector-Tensor (VT) theories of gravity are a class of alternative theories to General Relativity (GR) that are characterized by the presence of a dynamical vector field besides the metric. They are studied in attempts to understand…
A quantum scalar field theory with spacetime-dependent coupling is studied. Surprisingly, while translation invariance is explicitly broken in the classical theory, momentum conservation is recovered at the quantum level for some specific…
Ultraviolet finite quantum field theory on even dimensional noncommutative spacetime is formulated using coordinate coherent states. 2d spacetime is foliated into families of orthogonal, non commutative, two-planes. Lorentz invariance is…
Phenomenologically appealing supersymmetric grand unified theories have large gauge representations and thus are not asymptotically free. Their ultraviolet validity is limited by the appearance of a Landau pole well before the Planck scale.…
Higher derivative quantum corrections are essential components of scalar tensor effective field theories (EFTs), yet they typically reintroduce the Ostrogradsky ghost instability that the classical theory was designed to evade. This paper…
We discuss a model describing exactly a thin spherically symmetric shell of matter with zero rest mass. We derive the reduced formulation of this system in which the variables are embeddings, their conjugate momenta, and Dirac observables.…
The bare bones of a theory of quantum gravity are exposed. It may have the potential to solve the cosmological constant problem. Less certain is its behavior in the Newtonian limit.
We point out that the scenario for UV completion by "classicalization", proposed recently is in fact Wilsonian in the classical Wilsonian sense. It corresponds to the situation when a field theory has a nontrivial UV fixed point governed by…
We consider coupling an ordinary quantum field theory with an infinite number of degrees of freedom to a topological field theory. On R^d the new theory differs from the original one by the spectrum of operators. Sometimes the local…
In the first order formalism of gravitational theories, the spacetime connection is considered as an independent variable to vary together with the metric. However, the metric still generates its Levi-Civita connection that turns out to…
Quantum gravity was born as that branch of modern theoretical physics that tries to unify its guiding principles, i.e., quantum mechanics and general relativity. Nowadays it is providing new insight into the unification of all fundamental…