Related papers: On free fall of quantum matter
Based on the modelling of quantum systems with the aid of (classical) non-equilibrium thermodynamics, both the emergence and the collapse of the superposition principle are understood within one and the same framework. Both are shown to…
Quantum matter in quantum space-time is discussed using general properties of energy-conservation laws. As a rather radical conclusion, it is found that standard methods of differential geometry and quantum field theory on curved space-time…
Background independence is often emphasized as an important property of a quantum theory of gravity that takes seriously the geometrical nature of general relativity. In a background-independent formulation, quantum gravity should determine…
The spreading of quantum mechanical wave packets is studied in two cases. Firstly we look at the time behavior of the packet width of a free particle confined in the observable Universe. Secondly, by imposing the conservation of the time…
By modelling quantum systems as emerging from a (classical) sub-quantum thermodynamics, the quantum mechanical "decay of the wave packet" is shown to simply result from sub-quantum diffusion with a specific diffusion coefficient varying in…
The assumed universality of the equivalence principle suggests that a particle in a gravitational field has identical physics to one in an accelerated frame. Yet, energy considerations prohibit radiation from a static particle in a…
When attempting to assess the strengths and weaknesses of various principles in their potential role of guiding the formulation of a theory of quantum gravity, it is crucial to distinguish between principles which are strongly supported by…
At a fundamental level the notion of particle (quantum) comes from quantum field theory. From this point of view we estimate corrections to the free particle wave function due to minimum-length deformed quantum mechanics to the first order…
We consider the evolution of quantum fields on a classical background space-time, formulated in the language of differential geometry. Time evolution along the worldlines of observers is described by parallel transport operators in an…
The effects of the de Broglie-Bohm quantum potential on a test particle of mass $m$ are investigated in a conformally-flat geometry. A real, nonlinear, scalar field $\Psi$ is introduced and related directly to the conformal factor and to…
We consider a simplified model of quantum gravity using a mini-superspace description of an isotropic and homogeneous universe with dust. We derive the corresponding Friedmann equations for the scale factor, which now contain a dependence…
We describe a scheme for the exploration of quantum gravity phenomenology focussing on effects that could be thought as arising from a fundamental granularity of space-time. In contrast with the simplest assumptions, such granularity is…
The existence of a fundamental scale, a lower bound to any output of a position measurement, seems to be a model-independent feature of quantum gravity. In fact, different approaches to this theory lead to this result. The key ingredients…
It is shown that, with some reasonable assumptions, the theory of general relativity can be made compatible with quantum mechanics by using the field equations of general relativity to construct a Robertson-Walker metric for a quantum…
The quantum free particle on the sphere $S_\kappa^2$ ($\kappa>0$) and on the hyperbolic plane $H_\kappa^2$ ($\kappa<0$) is studied using a formalism that considers the curvature $\k$ as a parameter. The first part is mainly concerned with…
General relativity describes the gravitational field geometrically and in a self-interacting way because it couples to all forms of energy, including its own. Both features make finding a quantum theory difficult, yet it is important in the…
The wave-particle duality of the vacuum states of quantum fields is considered and the particle-like property of the vacuum state of a quantum field is proposed as a vacuum-particle which carries the vacuum-energy and the vacuum-momentum of…
We take a closer and new look at the effects of tidal forces on the free fall of a quantum particle inside a spherically symmetric gravitational field. We derive the corresponding Schr\"odinger equation for the particle by starting from the…
Wavepackets in quantum mechanics spread and the Universe in cosmology expands. We discuss a formalism where the two effects can be unified. The basic assumption is that the Universe is determined by a unitarily evolving wavepacket defined…
The role of the equivalence principle in the context of non-relativistic quantum mechanics and matter wave interferometry, especially atom beam interferometry, will be discussed. A generalised form of the weak equivalence principle which is…