Related papers: A semiclassical singularity theorem
One of the obstacles to reconciling quantum theory with general relativity, is constructing a theory which is both consistent with observation, and and gives finite answers at high energy, so that the theory holds at arbitrarily short…
The phenomenon of quantum vacuum polarization in the presence of a gravitational field is well understood and is expected to have a physical reality, but studies of its back-reaction on the dynamics of spacetime are practically non-existent…
We use a Hamiltonian version of the semiclassical Einstein equation to study classical gravity coupled to a quantum scalar field with potential in spherical symmetry. The system is defined by effective constraints where the matter terms are…
In a previous work and in terms of an exact quantum-mechanical framework, $\hbar$-independent causal and retarded expectation values of the second-quantized electro-magnetic fields in the Coulomb gauge were derived in the presence of a…
In this survey, we review some of the low energy quantum predictions of General Relativity which are independent of details of the yet unknown high-energy completion of the gravitational interaction. Such predictions can be extracted using…
Hawking's singularity theorem concerns matter obeying the strong energy condition (SEC), which means that all observers experience a nonnegative effective energy density (EED), thereby guaranteeing the timelike convergence property.…
We consider semiclassical gravity with a Klein-Gordon field with mass $m^2 \geq 0$ and curvature coupling $\xi = 1/2$. We identify a special class of Hadamard two-point functions for which the semiclassical system is quasi-linear hyperbolic…
Whereas semiclassical gravity is based on the semiclassical Einstein equation with sources given by the expectation value of the stress-energy tensor of quantum fields, stochastic semiclassical gravity is based on the Einstein-Langevin…
We develop a semiclassical approximation scheme for the constraint equations of supersymmetric canonical quantum gravity. This is achieved by a Born-Oppenheimer type of expansion, in analogy to the case of the usual Wheeler-DeWitt equation.…
There ought to exist a reformulation of quantum theory, even at energy scales much lower than Planck scale, which does not depend on classical time. Such a formulation is required also for the standard model of particle physics, at the low…
On the path towards quantum gravity, we find friction between temporal relations in quantum mechanics (QM) (where they are fixed and field-independent), and in general relativity (where they are field-dependent and dynamic). This paper aims…
In this paper, we outline a new approach to quantum gravity; describing states for a bounded region of spacetime as eigenstates for two classes of physically plausible gedanken experiments. We end up with two complementary descriptions in…
Quantum field theory in a semiclassical background can be derived as an approximation to quantum gravity from a weak-coupling expansion in the inverse Planck mass. Such an expansion is studied for evolution on "nice-slices" in the spacetime…
It is argued that quantum gravity has an interpretation as a topological field theory provided a certain constraint from the path intergral measure is respected. The constraint forces us to couple gauge and matter fields to gravity for…
We introduce a class of space-times modeling singular events such as evaporating black holes and topology changes, which we dub as semi-globally hyperbolic space-times. On these space-times we aim to study the existence of reasonable…
Quantum gravity is expected to be necessary in order to understand situations where classical general relativity breaks down. In particular in cosmology one has to deal with initial singularities, i.e. the fact that the backward evolution…
As is well known, the universally accepted theory as quantum gravity (QG) doesn't exist. One of the main reasons for that is that quantized general relativity is perturbatively nonrenormalizable. But there are several theories whose…
The old cosmological-constant (CC) problem indicates an inconsistency of the usual formulation of semiclassical gravity. The usual formulation of semiclassical gravity also seems to be inconsistent with the conventional interpretation of…
Inflationary cosmology has, in the last few years,received a strong dose of support from observations. The fact that the fluctuation spectrum can be extracted from the inflationary scenario through an analysis that involves quantum field…
The quantum theory of a spatially flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe with a massless scalar field as source is further investigated. The classical model is singular, and in the framework of the Arnowitt-Deser-Misner canonical…