Related papers: Temporal relationalism
In general relativity, the picture of spacetime assigns an ideal clock to each worldline. Being ideal, gravitational effects due to these clocks are ignored and the flow of time according to one clock is not affected by the presence of…
The combination of quantum theory and special relativity leads to structures that differ in several respects from non-relativistic quantum mechanics of particles. These differences are quite familiar to practitioners of Algebraic Quantum…
Space and time are crucial twins in physics. In quantum mechanics, spatial correlations already reveal nonclassical features, such as entanglement, and have bred many quantum technologies. However, the nature of quantum temporal…
The geometric form of standard quantum mechanics is compatible with the two postulates: 1) The laws of physics are invariant under the choice of experimental setup and 2) Every quantum observation or event is intrinsically statistical.…
One of the main technical obstacles in constructing a consistent theory of quantum gravity is that the metric itself defines the causal structure required for quantization. This motivates implementing quantum aspects of gravity through an…
The aim of this work is to review the concepts of time in quantum mechanics and general relativity to show their incompatibility. We show that the absolute character of Newtonian time is present in quantum mechanics and also partially in…
Quantum gravity (or quantum spacetime) is to unify general relativity and quantum mechanics into a single theoretical framework and presented as the most important open puzzle in fundamental physics. The development of a microscopic theory…
General relativity and quantum mechanics have both revealed the relativity of certain notions that were previously thought to be absolute. I clarify the precise sense in which these theories are relational, and I argue that the various…
We propose a solution to the problem of time for systems with a single global Hamiltonian constraint. Our solution stems from the observation that, for these theories, conventional gauge theory methods fail to capture the full classical…
If gravity respects quantum mechanics, it is important to identify the essential postulates of a quantum framework capable of incorporating gravitational phenomena. Such a construct likely requires elimination or modification of some of the…
For a physical interpretation of a theory of quantum gravity, it is necessary to recover classical spacetime, at least approximately. However, quantum gravity may eventually provide classical spacetimes by giving spectral data similar to…
Quantum non-local correlations and the acausal, spooky action at a distance suggest a discord between quantum theory and special relativity. We propose a resolution for this discord by first observing that there is a problem of time in…
A new interpretation of quantum mechanics, similar to the Copenhagen interpretation, is developed from time-symmetry arguments and commonly held principles concerning time and causality. These principles, which are grounded in ideas outside…
In this note, we attempt to provide some insights into the structure of non-perturbative descriptions of quantum gravity using known examples of gauge-theory / gravity duality. We argue that in familiar examples, a quantum description of…
This paper presents an brief review of some recent work on the causal set approach to quantum gravity. Causal sets are a discretisation of spacetime that allow the symmetries of GR to be preserved in the continuum approximation. One…
The use of a relational time in quantum mechanics is a framework in which one promotes to quantum operators all variables in a system, and later chooses one of the variables to operate like a ``clock''. Conditional probabilities are…
There is a deep structural link between acausal spacetimes and quantum theory. As a consequence quantum theory may resolve some "paradoxes" of time travel. Conversely, non-time-orientable spacetimes naturally give rise to electric charges…
We develop a new interpretation of quantum theory by combining insights from extended Wigner's friend scenarios and quantum causal modelling. In this interpretation, which synthesizes ideas from relational quantum mechanics and consistent…
In order to construct a quantum theory of gravity, we may have to abandon certain assumptions we were making. In particular, the concept of spacetime as a continuum substratum is questioned. Causal Sets is an attempt to construct a quantum…
We begin with a brief summary of issues encountered involving causality in quantum theory, placing careful emphasis on the assumptions involved in results such as the EPR paradox and Bell's inequality. We critique some solutions to the…