Related papers: Antigravity from a spacetime defect
Time is absolute in standard quantum theory and dynamical in general relativity. The combination of both theories into a theory of quantum gravity leads therefore to a "problem of time". In my essay I shall investigate those consequences…
We propose a new classical theory of gravity which is based on the principle of equivalence and assumption that gravity, similarly to electrodynamics, is described by a vector field in Minkowski space-time. We show that such assumptions…
The description of gravity in the form of an embedding theory is based on the hypothesis that our space-time is a four-dimensional surface in a flat ten-dimensional space. The choice of standard Einstein-Hilbert action leads in this case to…
Production of gravitational vacuum defects and their contribution to the energy density of our Universe are discussed. These topological microstructures (defects) could be produced in the result of creation of the Universe from "nothing"…
The vacuum of quantum fields contains correlated fluctuations. When restricted to one side of a surface these have a huge entropy of entanglement that scales with the surface area. If UV physics renders this entropy finite, then a…
We propose the use of a gravitational uncertainty principle for gravitation. We define the corresponding gravitational Planck's constant and the gravitational quantum of mass. We define entropy in terms of the quantum of gravity with the…
We explore an idea put forward many years ago by Zeldovich and Novikov concerning the existence of compact objects endowed with arbitrarily small mass. The energy-density of such objects, which we call ``Ghost stars'', is negative in some…
The fact that in Minkowski space, space and time are both quantized does not have to be introduced as a new postulate in physics, but can actually be derived by combining certain features of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. This is…
Whereas repulsive gravity was considered as a fringe concept until the mid-1990's, the growingexperimental evidence since this epoch for repulsive gravity, in what is now called Dark Energy,for lack of a better understanding of its nature,…
The field equations of a generalized $f(R)$ type gravity model, in which there is an arbitrary coupling between matter and geometry, are obtained. The equations of motion for test particles are derived from a variational principle in the…
In the Einstein gravity, besides the usual gravitational and centrifugal potential there is an additional attractive term that couples these two together. It is fun to enquire whether the latter could fully counteract the centrifugal…
We introduce a special class of bimetric theories of quantized fields with preserved classical energy conditions. More precisely, we describe the missing anti-particles in our visible universe as being trapped in a spacetime patch with…
Suppose we assume that (a) information about a black hole is encoded in its Hawking radiation and (b) causality is not violated to leading order in gently curved spacetime. Then we argue that spacetime cannot just be described as a manifold…
Adopting a non geometrical point of view, we are led to an alternative theory of the order two and symetric gravitational tensor field of GR. The field is no more interpreted as the metric of our space-time. The true metric is globally…
A set of diverse but mutually consistent results obtained in different settings has spawned a new view of loop quantum gravity and its physical implications, based on the interplay of operator calculations and effective theory: Quantum…
Global topological defects described by real scalar field in (3,1) dimensions coupled to gravity are analyzed. We consider a class of scalar potentials with explicit dependence with distance, evading Derrick's theorem and leading to defects…
It is now widely believed that if the gravitational field is (perturbatively) quantum, it would entangle two massive objects (in spatial superpositions) which were otherwise unentangled to begin with. Recently, actual table-top experiments…
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 is univocally anticipated that in a theory of quantum gravity, there exist quantum superpositions of semiclassical states of spacetime geometry. Such states could arise for example, from a source mass in a superposition of spatial…
A recent study of supersymmetric domain walls in $N=1$ supergravity theories revealed a new class of domain walls interpolating between supersymmetric vacua with different non-positive cosmological constants. We classify three classes of…