Related papers: Spacetime geometry fluctuations and geodesic devia…
We treat two possible phenomenological effects of quantum fluctuations of spacetime geometry: spectral line broadening and angular blurring of the image of a distance source. A geometrical construction will be used to express both effects…
Quantum fluctuations of the vacuum stress-energy tensor are highly non-Gaussian, and can have unexpectedly large effects on spacetime geometry. In this paper, we study a two-dimensional dilaton gravity model coupled to a conformal field, in…
The operational meaning of spacetime fluctuations is discussed. Classical spacetime geometry can be viewed as encoding the relations between the motions of test particles in the geometry. By analogy, quantum fluctuations of spacetime…
The fluctuations of spacetime geometries at finite temperature are evaluated within the linearized theory of gravity. These fluctuations are described by the probability distribution of various configurations of the gravitational field. The…
Quantum vacuum fluctuations tend to be strongly anti-correlated, which reduces their observable effects. However, time dependence can upset the cancellation of these anti-correlated fluctuations and greatly enhance their effects. This form…
We analyze the quantum fluctuations of vacuum stress tensors and spacetime curvatures, using the framework of linear response theory which connects these fluctuations to dissipation mechanisms arising when stress tensors and spacetime…
We study the passive influence of quantum matter fluctuations on the expansion parameter of a congruence of timelike geodesics in a semiclassical regime. In particular, we show that, the perturbations of this parameter can be considered to…
We summarize several aspects of recent work on quantum stress tensor fluctuations and their role in driving fluctuations of the gravitational field. The role of correlations and anticorrelations is emphasized. We begin with a review of the…
The quantum lightcone fluctuations in flat spacetimes with compactified spatial dimensions or with boundaries are examined. The discussion is based upon a model in which the source of the underlying metric fluctuations is taken to be…
We consider implications of the microscopic dynamics of spacetime for the evolution of cosmological models. We argue that quantum geometry effects may lead to stochastic fluctuations of the gravitational constant, which is thus considered…
We treat the gravitational effects of quantum stress tensor fluctuations. An operational approach is adopted in which these fluctuations produce fluctuations in the focusing of a bundle of geodesics. This can be calculated explicitly using…
The quantum fluctuation of the stress tensor of a quantum field are discussed, as are the resulting spacetime metric fluctuations. Passive quantum gravity is an approximation in which gravity is not directly quantized, but fluctuations of…
We study a model for quantum lightcone fluctuations in which vacuum fluctuations of the electric field and of the squared electric field in a nonlinear dielectric material produce variations in the flight times of probe pulses. When this…
At the mesoscopic scales --- which interpolate between the macroscopic, classical, geometry and the microscopic, quantum, structure of spacetime --- one can identify the density of states of the geometry which arises from the existence of a…
We consider a timelike geodesic congruence in the presence of perturbative quantum fluctuations of the spacetime metric. We calculate the change in the volume of a bundle of geodesics due to such fluctuations and thereby obtain a…
The geodesic deviation equation (`GDE') provides an elegant tool to investigate the timelike, null and spacelike structure of spacetime geometries. Here we employ the GDE to review these structures within the…
Spacetime geometry is treated as a fluctuating, stochastic quantum system allowing an effective quantum gravity solution to the cosmological constant problem. A Focker-Planck equation for the probability density of spacetime metric…
The two-point function characterizing the stress tensor fluctuations of a massless minimally coupled field for an invariant vacuum state in de Sitter spacetime is discussed. This two-point function is explicitly computed for spacelike…
We describe how a model of effective interactions between quantum fluctuations under certain assumptions can be constructed in a way so that the large-scale limit gives an effective theory that matches general relativity in vacuum regions.…
We show how the quantization of two-dimensional gravity leads to an (Euclidean) quantum space-time where the average geometry is that of constant negative curvature and where the Hartle-Hawking boundary condition arises naturally.