Related papers: Quantum Fluctuations and New Instantons I: Linear …
This article traces the development of fluctuation theory and its deep connection to irreversibility, from equilibrium to near-equilibrium, and finally to far-from-equilibrium systems. Classical fluctuation theorems, which capture the…
The quantum to classical transition of fluctuations in the early universe is still not completely understood. Some headway has been made incorporating the effects of decoherence and the squeezing of states, though the methods and procedures…
Particle-antiparticle pairs are predicted by quantum field theory to appear as vacuum fluctuations. The model of the vacuum used here is postulated to have the following properties: To minimize the violation of conservation energy allowed…
The cosmological constant problem arises because the magnitude of vacuum energy density predicted by quantum mechanics is about 120 orders of magnitude larger than the value implied by cosmological observations of accelerating cosmic…
We explore the cosmological implications of a mechanism found in several approaches to quantum-gravity, whereby the spectral dimension of spacetime runs from the standard value of 4 in the infrared (IR) to a smaller value in the ultraviolet…
The positive energy theorem precludes the possibility of Minkowski flat space decaying by any mechanism. In certain circumstances, however, large quantum fluctuations of the gravitational field could arise---not only at the Planck scale,…
Based on the concepts of the quantum field theory of virtual photons as quanta of electromagnetic interaction, we discuss the physical content of the phenomena underlying the principle of quantum uncertainties. We consider the features of…
We review the euclidean path-integral formalism in connection with the one-dimensional non-relativistic particle. The configurations which allow to construct a semiclassical approximation classify themselves into either topological…
Fluctuations are ubiquitous in nature. They are one of the fundamental building blocks of quantum mechanics and are responsible for a wide variety of phenomena in many areas of physics, ranging from biology to cosmology. Far from any…
Quantum fluctuations of some systems vanish not only in the limit $\hbar\to 0$, but also as some other parameters (such as $1\over N$, the inverse of the number of `colors' of a Yang-Mills theory) vanish. These lead to new classical limits…
Detailed measurements of the cosmic microwave background indicate the large-scale homogeneity of the universe. On very small scales, we observe however inhomogeneities such as galaxies, stars, planets and ourselves. In the context of hot…
According to most inflationary models, fluctuations that are of cosmological size today started out much smaller than any plausible cutoff length such as the string or Planck lengths. It has been shown that this could open an experimental…
The theory of Gaussian quantum fluctuations around classical steady states in nonlinear quantum-optical systems (also known as standard linearization) is a cornerstone for the analysis of such systems. Its simplicity, together with its…
A new approximation scheme for nonperturbative renormalisation group equations for quantum gravity is introduced. Correlation functions of arbitrarily high order can be studied by resolving the full dependence of the renormalisation group…
A quantization method based on replacement of c-number by c-number parameterized by an unbiased hidden random variable is developed. In contrast to canonical quantization, the replacement has straightforward physical interpretation as…
Infinite entanglement fluctuations appear when a quantum field theory on a causally complete domain of space-time is a type $III$ factor. In the weak gravity limit $G_N=0$ this factor can be transformed into a crossed product type $II$…
We investigate the cosmological signatures of instantons mediating tunneling between de Sitter minima. For generic potentials the Coleman-de Luccia instanton does not necessarily exist; when it does not, the instanton which contributes to…
Quantum gravity arguments and the entropy bound for effective field theories proposed in PRL 82, 4971 (1999) lead to consider two correlated scales which parametrize departures from relativistic quantum field theory at low and high…
We study the path-integral formalism in the imaginary-time to show its validity in a case with a metastable ground state. The well-known method based on the bounce solution leads to the imaginary part of the energy even for a state that is…
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…