Related papers: Resolving Spacetime Singularities within Asymptoti…
We discuss the conceptual ideas underlying the Asymptotic Safety approach to the nonperturbative renormalization of gravity. By now numerous functional renormalization group studies predict the existence of a suitable nontrivial ultraviolet…
An important task faced by all approaches of quantum gravity is to incorporate superpositions and quantify quantum uncertainties of spacetime causal relations. We address this task in 2D. By identifying a global $Z_2$ symmetry of 1+1D…
Graviton fluctuations induce strong non-perturbative infrared renormalization effects for the cosmological constant. The functional renormalization flow drives a positive cosmological constant towards zero, solving the cosmological constant…
We study an effective quantum description of the static gravitational potential for spherically symmetric systems up to the first post-Newtonian order. We start by obtaining a Lagrangian for the gravitational potential coupled to a static…
Recent progress in table-top experiments offers the opportunity to show for the first time that gravity is not compatible with a classical description. In all current experimental proposals, such as the generation of gravitationally induced…
Unimodular gravity is based on a modification of the usual Einstein-Hilbert action that allows one to recover general relativity with a dynamical cosmological constant. It also has the interesting property of providing, as the momentum…
We consider a solution to the problem of time in quantum gravity by deparameterisation of the ADM action in terms of York time, a parameter proportional to the extrinsic curvature of a spatial hypersurface. We study a minisuperspace model…
The gravitational back-reaction is calculated for the conformally invariant scalar field within a black cosmic string interior with cosmological constant. Using the perturbed metric, the gravitational effects of the quantum field are…
We consider a spacetime singularity at $t = 0$ arising in a Kasner-type metric that solves the gravitational equations modified by quantum effects of a conformal field theory (CFT). The resulting constraints can be solved efficiently when…
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…
An argument is presented that if a theory of quantum gravity is physically discrete at the Planck scale and the theory recovers General Relativity as an approximation, then, at the current stage of our knowledge, causal sets must arise…
In loop quantum cosmology, non-perturbative quantum gravity effects lead to the resolution of the big bang singularity by a quantum bounce without introducing any new degrees of freedom. Though fundamentally discrete, the theory admits a…
We discuss a model describing exactly a thin spherically symmetric shell of matter with zero rest mass. We derive the reduced formulation of this system in which the variables are embeddings, their conjugate momenta, and Dirac observables.…
I describe the treatment of gravity as a quantum effective field theory. This allows a natural separation of the (known) low energy quantum effects from the (unknown) high energy contributions. Within this framework, gravity is a well…
In the last decade, progress on quantization of homogeneous cosmological spacetimes using techniques of loop quantum gravity has led to insights on various fundamental questions and has opened new avenues to explore Planck scale physics.…
Consistent coupling of quantum and classical degrees of freedom exists so long as there is both diffusion of the classical degrees of freedom and decoherence of the quantum system. In this paper, we derive the Newtonian limit of such…
The problem of finding the quantum theory of the gravitational field, and thus understanding what is quantum spacetime, is still open. One of the most active of the current approaches is loop quantum gravity. Loop quantum gravity is a…
A central aspect of the cosmological constant problem is to understand why vacuum energy does not gravitate. In order to account for this observation, while allowing for nontrivial dynamics of the quantum vacuum, we motivate a novel…
In this thesis we investigate various fundamental aspects of asymptotically safe quantum gravity, in particular the compatibility of Asymptotic Safety with the requirements for background independence and unitarity. The first part contains…
Quantum Gravity is expected to resolve the singularities of classical General Relativity. Based on destructive interference of singular spacetime-configurations in the path integral, we find that higher-order curvature terms may allow to…