Related papers: Comment on Coleman-DeLuccia Instantons
In this note we prove that the volume of a causal diamond associated with an inertial observer in asymptotically de Sitter 4-dimensional space-time is monotonically increasing function of cosmological time. The asymptotic value 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 study the gravitational phase space associated to a stretched horizon within a finite-sized causal diamond in $(d+2)$-dimensional spacetimes. By imposing the Raychaudhuri equation, we obtain its constrained symplectic form using the…
It is known that quantum field theories in curved spacetime suffer from a number of pathologies, including the inability to relate states on different spatial slices by proper unitary time-evolution operators. In this article, we illustrate…
We consider the decay of a false vacuum in circumstances where the methods suggested by Coleman run into difficulties. We find that in these cases quantum fluctuations play a crucial role. Namely, they naturally induce both an ultraviolet…
We investigate cosmological scenarios with a non-minimal derivative coupling between the scalar field and the curvature, examining both the quintessence and the phantom cases in zero and constant potentials. In general, we find that the…
We propose a simple, well-motivated and robust alternative to a metastable de Sitter vacuum in string theory, consistent with current observations of dark energy and naturally satisfying conjectured swampland constraints. Inflation ends in…
We study a class of oscillating bounce solutions to the Euclidean field equations for gravity coupled to a scalar field theory with two, possibly degenerate, vacua. In these solutions the scalar field crosses the top of the potential…
We show that the simplicity constraints, which define the dynamics of spin foam models, imply, and are implied by, the first law of thermodynamics, when the latter is applied to causal diamonds in the quantum spacetime. This result reveals…
The Einstein's field equations of Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universes filled with a dissipative fluid described by both the {\em truncated} and {\em non-truncated} causal transport equations are analyzed using techniques from dynamical…
Effective field theories in flat space and in anti-de Sitter space are constrained by causality and unitarity, often in the form of positivity bounds. Similar bounds have been harder to demonstrate in cosmological backgrounds, where the…
By analytically continuing recently-found instantons, we construct time-dependent solutions of Einstein-Maxwell de Sitter gravity which smoothly bounce between two de Sitter phases. These deformations of de Sitter space undergo several…
We study solutions for the Klein-Gordon equation with vector and scalar potentials of the Coulomb types under the influence of non-inertial effects in the space-time of topological defects. We also investigate a quantum particle described…
We demonstrate that the phase space of the soft sector of asymptotically flat gravity in four spacetime dimensions can be identified with that of a spherically symmetric finite casual diamond in Minkowski spacetime. The leading soft…
The aim of this work is to provided the details of a calculation summarized in the recent paper by Maltz and Susskind which conjectured a potentially rigorous framework where the status of de Sitter space is the same as that of a resonance…
We study the discrete causal set geometry of a small causal diamond in a curved spacetime using the average abundance of k-element chains or total orders in the underlying causal set C. We begin by obtaining the first order curvature…
We develop the non-perturbative reduced phase space quantization of causal diamonds in (2+1)-dimensional gravity with a nonpositive cosmological constant. In Part I we described the classical reduction process and the reduced phase space,…
It is believed that gravity will be explained in the framework of the existing quantum theory when one succeeds in eliminating divergencies at large momenta or small distances (although the phenomenon of gravity has been observed only at…
Motivated by recent work suggesting observably large spacetime fluctuations in the causal development of an empty region of flat space, we conjecture that these metric fluctuations can be quantitatively described in terms of a conformal…
Quantum consistency suggests that any de Sitter patch that lasts a number of Hubble times that exceeds its Gibbons-Hawking entropy divided by the number of light particle species suffers an effect of quantum breaking. Inclusion of other…