Related papers: Emergent unitarity in de Sitter from matrix integr…
Physical spacetime geometry follows from some effective thermodynamics of quantum states of all fields and particles described in frames of General Relativity. In the sense of pure field theoretical Einstein's point of view on gravitation…
The quantization of the reduced phase-space of the Einstein-Hilbert action for gravity in $2+1D$ has been shown to bring about the emergence, at the quantum level, of a topological quantum field theory endowed with an $SU_q(2)$ quantum…
We consider Hilbert's problem of the axioms of Physics at a qualitative or conceptual level. This issue is more pressing than ever as we seek to understand how both General Relativity and quantum theory could emerge from some deeper theory…
Recently, it has been proposed that the dimension of the Hilbert space of quantum gravity in deSitter space is finite and moreover it is expressed in terms of the coupling constants by using the entropy formula. A weaker conjecture would be…
Vacuum decay in de Sitter space is a process of great physical interest, as it allows to rule out cosmological models in the early and current Universe. Its rate may be described in terms of an instanton in Euclidean space called bounce and…
We study gravitational theories with a cosmological constant and the Gauss-Bonnet curvature squared term and analyze the possibility of de Sitter expanding spacetime with a constant internal space. We find that there are two branches of the…
We investigate the quantum Ricci curvature, which was introduced in earlier work, in full, four-dimensional quantum gravity, formulated nonperturbatively in terms of Causal Dynamical Triangulations (CDT). A key finding of the CDT approach…
We have studied scalar potentials V of gauged N=8,4,2 supergravities in d=4. Extrema of these potentials may correspond to de Sitter, anti de Sitter and Minkowski vacua. All de Sitter extrema that we have studied correspond to unstable…
Combinatorial quantum gravity is governed by a discrete Einstein-Hilbert action formulated on an ensemble of random graphs. There is strong evidence for a second-order quantum phase transition separating a random phase at strong coupling…
A theory of exponential modified gravity which explains both early-time inflation and late-time acceleration, in a unified way, is proposed. The theory successfully passes the local tests and fulfills the cosmological bounds and,…
We employ the framework of affine covariant quantization and associated semiclassical portrait to address two main issues in the domain of quantum gravitational systems: (i) the fate of singularities and (ii) the lack of external time. Our…
This thesis explores the thermodynamics of the cosmological horizon, aiming to make progress towards a better understanding of the microscopic nature of its entropy. We utilise the constrained nature of low-dimensional gravity to do so and…
A quantum theory of gravity is described in the case of a positive cosmological constant in 3+1 dimensions. Both old and new results are described, which support the case that loop quantum gravity provides a satisfactory quantum theory of…
The dimension of the Hilbert space of a quantum gravitational system can be written formally as a path integral partition function over Lorentzian metrics. We implement this in a 2+1 dimensional simplicial minisuperspace model in which the…
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…
The so-called Einstein-Aether theory is General Relativity coupled (at second derivative order) to a dynamical unit time-like vector field (the aether). It is a Lorentz-violating theory, and gained much attention in the recent years. In the…
Quantum mechanical unitarity in our universe is challenged both by the notion of the big bang, in which nothing transforms into something, and the expansion of space, in which something transforms into more something. This motivates the…
In these lectures we give a review of recent attempts to understand quantum gravity on de Sitter spaces. In particular, we discuss the holographic correspondence between de Sitter gravity and conformal field theories proposed by Hull and by…
Contrary to the general belief, there has recently been quite a few examples of unitary evolution of quantum cosmological models. The present work gives more examples, namely Bianchi type VI and type II. These examples are important as they…
Symmetries impose structure on the Hilbert space of a quantum mechanical model. The mathematical units of this structure are the irreducible representations of symmetry groups and I consider how they function as conceptual units of…