Related papers: Loops rescue the no-boundary proposal
The Planck scale is usually believed to be an unpassable wall. Putting a cutoff there and thinking of it as a quantized spacetime entity shows that. However, this is exactly the cause of many problems in quantum gravity. The cosmological…
We consider the question of asymptotic observables in cosmology. We assume that string theory contains a landscape of vacua, and that metastable de Sitter regions can decay to zero cosmological constant by bubble nucleation. The asymptotic…
A free massless scalar field is coupled to homogeneous and isotropic loop quantum cosmology. The coupled model is investigated in the vicinity of the classical singularity, where discreteness is essential and where the quantum model is…
Each approach to the quantum-gravity problem originates from expertise in one or another area of theoretical physics. The particle-physics perspective encourages one to attempt to reproduce in quantum gravity as much as possible of the…
We identify a fundamental obstruction to any theory of the beginning of the universe, formulated as a semiclassical path integral. Hartle and Hawking's no boundary proposal and Vilenkin's tunneling proposal are examples of such theories.…
Based on empirical evidence, quantum systems appear to be strictly linear and gauge invariant. This work uses concise mathematics to show that quantum eigenvalue equations on a one dimensional ring can either be gauge invariant or have a…
We re-examine the process of loop quantization for flat isotropic models in cosmology. In particular, we contrast different inequivalent `loop quantizations' of these simple models through their respective successes and limitations and…
We review a few off-the-beaten-track ideas in cosmology. They solve a variety of fundamental problems; also they are fun. We start with a description of non-singular dilaton cosmology. In these scenarios gravity is modified so that the…
Since there are quantization ambiguities in constructing the Hamiltonian constraint operator in isotropic loop quantum cosmology, it is crucial to check whether the key features of loop quantum cosmology, such as the quantum bounce and…
In this contribution we consider the issue of singularity resolution within loop quantum cosmology (LQC) for different homogeneous models. We present results of numerical evolutions of effective equations for both isotropic as well as…
A brief overview of loop quantum cosmology of homogeneous isotropic models is presented with emphasis on the origin of and subtleties associated with the resolution of big bang and big crunch singularities. These results bear out the…
Among the available quantum gravity proposals, string theory, loop quantum gravity, non-commutative geometry, group field theory, causal sets, asymptotic safety, causal dynamical triangulation, emergent gravity are among the best motivated…
It is shown that several prescriptions for the effective continuum limit of the flat Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker loop quantum cosmology can be understood as the exact classical limit of the Wheeler-DeWitt quantization of certain…
Alternative scenarios to the Big Bang singularity have been subject of intense research for several decades by now. Most popular in this sense have been frameworks were such singularity is replaced by a bounce around some minimal…
In this thesis we consider the problem of dynamics in canonical loop quantum gravity, primarily in the context of deparametrized models, in which a scalar field is taken as a physical time variable for the dynamics of the gravitational…
I argue that the linearity of quantum mechanics is an emergent feature at the Planck scale, along with the manifold structure of space-time. In this regime the usual causality violation objections to nonlinearity do not apply, and nonlinear…
Recent advances in quantum technologies have enabled quantum simulation of gauge theories -- some of the most fundamental frameworks of nature -- in regimes far from equilibrium, where classical computation is severely limited. These…
We summarize our investigations of the second-order perturbations in loop quantum cosmology (LQC). We shall discuss, primarily, two aspects. Firstly, whether the second-order contributions arising from the cosmic bounce, occurring at Planck…
These lecture notes cover 13 sessions and are presented as an e-print, intended to evolve over time. Quantum invariants do more than distinguish topological objects; they build bridges between topology, algebra, number theory and quantum…
A large number of models have been analyzed in loop quantum cosmology, using mainly minisuperspace constructions and perturbations. At the same time, general physics principles from effective field theory and covariance have often been…