Related papers: A note on the vacuum structure to lattice Euclidea…
Physical properties of the quantum gravitational vacuum state are explored by solving a lattice version of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. The constraint of diffeomorphism invariance is strong enough to uniquely determine the structure of the…
A variational calculation is presented of the ADM-energy of the quantized gravitational field around a wormhole solution of the classical Einstein's equations. One finds the energy of such state to be in general lower than the perturbative…
I discuss some aspects of a lattice approach to canonical quantum gravity in a connection formulation, discuss how it differs from the continuum construction, and compare the spectra of geometric operators - encoding information about…
In order to gain insight into the possible Ground State of Quantized Einstein's Gravity, we have devised a variational calculation of the energy of the quantum gravitational field in an open space, as measured by an asymptotic observer…
The structure of solids and their phases is mainly determined by static Coulomb forces while the coupling of charges to the dynamical, i.e., quantized degrees of freedom of the electromagnetic field plays only a secondary role. Recently, it…
In order to gain insight into the possible Ground State of Quantized Einstein's Gravity, we have derived a variational calculation of the energy of the quantum gravitational field in an open space, as measured by an asymptotic observer…
In some recent papers it is claimed that the physical significance of the vacuum angle theta for QCD-like theories depends on the chosen gauge condition. We criticise the arguments that were given in support of this claim, and show by…
We investigate a lattice model for Euclidean quantum gravity based on discretization of the Palatini formulation of General Relativity. Using Monte Carlo simulation we show that while a naive approach fails to lead to a vacuum state…
The stability of the vacuum for QED in the temporal gauge will be examined. It is generally assumed that the vacuum state is the quantum state with the lowest energy. However, it will be shown that this is not the case for a system…
We argue that the vacuum of quantum gravity must contain a hierarchical structure of correlations spanning all length scales. These correlated domains (called `vecros') correspond to virtual fluctuations of black hole microstates. Larger…
We review a long-standing difficulty in some semiclassical models of vacuum and vacuum decay. Surprisingly enough these models, careless of their transparent formulation, are affected by, both, technical and conceptual issues. After proving…
In these lectures we review our present understanding of the fractal structure of two-dimensional Euclidean quantum gravity coupled to matter.
As the microscopic structure of the deep relativistic quantum vacuum is unknown, a phenomenological approach ($q$-theory) has been proposed to describe the vacuum degrees of freedom and the dynamics of the vacuum energy after the Big Bang.…
The existence of a fundamental scale, a lower bound to any output of a position measurement, seems to be a model-independent feature of quantum gravity. In fact, different approaches to this theory lead to this result. The key ingredients…
False vacuum decay in field theory may be formulated as a boundary value problem in Euclidean space. In a previous work, we studied its solution in single scalar field theories with quadratic gravity and used it to find obstructions to…
The vacuum correlations of the gravitational field are highly non-trivial to be defined and computed, as soon as their arguments and indices do not belong to a background but become dynamical quantities. Their knowledge is essential however…
Quantum gravitational effects become significant at a cut-off species scale that can be much lower than the Planck scale whenever we get a parametrically large number of fields becoming light. This is expected to occur at any perturbative…
Given the increasing availability of lattice data for (unquenched) QCD with $N_f=2$, it is worth while to check whether the generated vacuum significantly deviates from the quenched one. I discuss a specific attempt to do this on the basis…
The idea that quantum gravity can be realized at the TeV scale is extremely attractive to theorists and experimentalists alike. This proposal leads to extra spacial dimensions large compared to the electroweak scale. Here we give a very…
The stress-energy tensor of the quantum vacuum is studied for the particular case of quantum electrodynamics (QED), that is a fictituous universe where only the electromagnetic and the electron-positron fields exist. The integrals involved…