Related papers: Dimensional Transmutation in Gravity and Cosmology
The four-dimensional gauge group of general relativity corresponds to arbitrary coordinate transformations on a four-manifold. Theories of gravity with a dynamical structure remarkably like Einstein's theory can be obtained on the basis of…
We discuss the nature of quantum field theories involving gravity that are classically scale-invariant. We show that gravitational radiative corrections are crucial in the determination of the nature of the vacuum state in such theories,…
Motivated by the apparent dependence of string $\sigma$--models on the sum of spacetime metric and antisymmetric tensor fields, we reconsider gravity theories constructed from a nonsymmetric metric. We first show that all such "geometrical"…
We examine the role of consistency with causality and quantum mechanics in determining the properties of gravitation. We begin by examining two different classes of interacting theories of massless spin 2 particles -- gravitons. One…
A discussion of the number of degrees of freedom, and their dynamical properties, in higher derivative gravitational theories is presented. The complete non-linear sigma model for these degrees of freedom is exhibited using the method of…
It is shown that gravitation naturally emerges from the standard model of particle physics if local scale invariance is imposed in the context of a single conformal (Weyl-symmetric) theory. Gravitation is then conformally-related to the…
Our conventional system of physical units is based on local or microscopic {\it dimensional} quantities which are {\it defined}, for convenience or otherwise aesthetic reasons, to be spacetime-independent. A more general choice of units may…
We study quantum gravity in $2+\epsilon$ dimensions in such a way to preserve the volume preserving diffeomorphism invariance. In such a formulation, we prove the following trinity: the general covariance, the conformal invariance and the…
A unified theory of four-dimensional gravity together with the standard model is presented, with supersymmetry breaking of M-theory at a TeV. Masses of the the known particles are derived. The cosmological constant is quantum generated to…
Gravitation is described in the context of a dilatonic theory that is conformally related to general relativity. All dimensionless ratios of fundamental dimensional quantities, e.g. particle masses and the Planck mass, as well as the…
Recently a scale invariant theory of gravity was constructed by imposing a conformal symmetry on general relativity. The imposition of this symmetry changed the configuration space from superspace - the space of all Riemannian 3-metrics…
We propose an additional term in the classical gravitational force law, which is repelling in nature, and which may solve the dark matter problem. As an inverse cube field interaction, it operates over 4 real spatial dimensions and its…
The main obstacle in attempts to construct a consistent quantum gravity is the absence of independent flat time. This can in principle be cured by going out to higher dimensions. The modern paradigm assumes that the fundamental theory of…
Gravitation as a fundamental interaction that governs all phenomena at large and very small scales, but still not well understood at a quantum level, is a cardinal missing link in unification of all physical interactions. Discovery of the…
A classical two dimensional theory of gravity which has a number of interesting features (including a Newtonian limit, black holes and gravitational collapse) is quantized using conformal field theoretic techniques. The critical dimension…
We consider a discrete model of euclidean quantum gravity in four dimensions based on a summation over random simplicial manifolds. The action used is the Einstein-Hilbert action plus an $R^2$-term. The phase diagram as a function of the…
General Relativity (GR) is a phenomenologically successful theory that rests on firm foundations, but has not been tested on cosmological scales. The advent of dark energy (and possibly even the requirement of cold dark matter), has…
We discuss two scenarios of emergent gravity. In one of them the quantum vacuum is considered as superplastic crystal, and the effective gravity describes the dynamical elastic deformations of this crystal. In the other one the…
We adopt a framework where quantum-gravity's dynamical dimensional reduction of spacetime at short distances is described in terms of modified dispersion relations. We observe that by subjecting such models to a momentum-space…
Quadratic gravity is a UV completion of general relativity, which also solves the hierarchy problem. The presence of 4 derivatives implies via the Ostrogradsky theorem that the $classical$ Hamiltonian is unbounded from below. Here we solve…