Related papers: Steps towards Lorentzian quantum gravity with caus…
Curvature is a key notion in General Relativity, characterizing the local physical properties of spacetime. By contrast, the concept of curvature has received scant attention in nonperturbative quantum gravity. One may even wonder whether…
Quantum causality extends the conventional notion of fixed causal structure by allowing channels and operations to act in an indefinite causal order. The importance of such an indefinite causal order ranges from the foundational---e.g.…
Causal set theory is an approach to quantum gravity in which spacetime is fundamentally discrete while retaining local Lorentz invariance. The Benincasa-Dowker-Glaser action is the causal set equivalent to the Einstein-Hilbert action…
For the construction of the Lorentzian path integral for gravity one faces two main questions: Firstly, what configurations to include, in particular whether to allow Lorentzian metrics that violate causality conditions. And secondly, how…
We search for a continuum limit in the causal dynamical triangulation (CDT) approach to quantum gravity by determining the change in lattice spacing using two independent methods. The two methods yield similar results that may indicate how…
In two space-time dimensions, there is a theory of Lorentzian quantum gravity which can be defined by a rigorous, non-perturbative path integral and is inequivalent to the well-known theory of (Euclidean) quantum Liouville gravity. It has a…
A "quantum-first" approach to gravity is described, where rather than quantizing general relativity, one seeks to formulate the physics of gravity within a quantum-mechanical framework with suitably general postulates. Important guides are…
Identifying an appropriate set of ``observables'' is a nontrivial task for most approaches to quantum gravity. We describe how it may be accomplished in the context of a recently proposed family of stochastic (but classical) dynamical laws…
The quest for a consistent theory which describes the quantum microstructure of spacetime seems to require some departure from the paradigms that have been followed in the construction of quantum theories for the other fundamental…
We construct an effective cosmological spin-foam model for a (2+1) dimensional spatially flat universe, discretized on a hypercubical lattice, containing both space- and time-like regions. Our starting point is the recently proposed…
Form factors constitute the key building block when organising the gravitational dynamics in terms of a curvature expansion. They generalise the concept of momentum-dependent couplings to curved spacetime. Moreover, they may capture…
We discuss the origin of causal set structure and the emergence of classical space and time in the universe. Given that the universe is a closed self-referential quantum automaton with a quantum register consisting of a vast number of…
Quantum theory is a mathematical formalism to compute probabilities for outcomes happenning in physical experiments. These outcomes constitute events happening in space-time. One of these events represents the fact that a system located in…
A theory governing the metric and matter fields in spacetime is {\it locally causal} if the probability distribution for the fields in any region is determined solely by physical data in the region's past, i.e. it is independent of events…
We construct higher-order curvature invariants in causal set quantum gravity. The motivation for this work is twofold: first, to characterize causal sets, discrete operators that encode geometric information on the emergent spacetime…
We provide a unified operational framework for the study of causality, non-locality and contextuality, in a fully device-independent and theory-independent setting. We define causaltopes, our chosen portmanteau of "causal polytopes", for…
Quantum cosmology based on Lorentzian path integrals is a promising avenue. However, many previous works allow non-Lorentzian configurations by integrating the squared scale factor over the whole real line. Here we show that restricting the…
Indefinite causal structure is generically present in theories of quantum gravity admitting a path integral formulation. We show that summing over causal structures eliminates ultraviolet divergences of matter QFT and resolves spacetime…
This article is based on the covariant causal set ($c$-causet) approach to discrete quantum gravity. A $c$-causet $x$ is a finite partially ordered set that has a unique labeling of its vertices. A rate of change on $x$ is described by a…
This paper elaborates on an intrinsically quantum approach to gravity, which begins with a general framework for quantum mechanics and then seeks to identify additional mathematical structure on Hilbert space that is responsible for gravity…