Related papers: A look inside Feynman's route to gravitation
This paper analyzes the effective field theory perspective on modern physics through the lens of the quantum theory of gravitational interaction. The historical part argues that the search for a theory of quantum gravity stimulated the…
This article is a summary of a talk about Richard Feynman, given at a conference Polymaths across the Eras organized in November 2023 by the St Cross Centre for the History and Philosophy of Physics (HAPP) in Oxford. It describes Feynman as…
Following Feynman's lectures on gravitation, we consider the theory of the gravitational (massless spin-2) field in flat spacetime and present the third- and fourth-order Lagrangian densities for the gravitational field. In particular, we…
One of several possibilities to construct a quantum theory of gravity is employing the Feynman path integral. This approach is plagued by some problems: the integration measure is not uniquely defined, the Einstein-Hilbert action unbounded,…
A history of the problem of mathematical and physical definition for the energy-momentum of the gravity field is reviewed. As it was noted 90 years ago by Hilbert (1917), Einstein (1918), Schrodinger (1918) and Bauer (1918) within…
We retrace an ab initio relativistic derivation of Maxwell's equations that was developed by Feynman in unpublished notes, clarifying the analogies and the differences with analogous treatments present in the literature. Unlike the latter,…
Already in the 1970s there where attempts to present a set of ground rules, sometimes referred to as a theory of gravitation theories, which theories of gravity should satisfy in order to be considered viable in principle and, therefore,…
These twenty-two lectures, with exercises, comprise the extent of what was meant to be a full-year graduate-level course on the strong interactions and QCD, given at Caltech in 1987-88. The course was cut short by the illness that led to…
Quantum field theory (QFT) based on the principles of special relativity (SR) and it is in fact the \emph{kinematic theory of fields}. The root assumption is that there is "relativistic description" of \emph{any} isolated quantum system in…
Between 1905 and 1907, Einstein first tried to extend the special theory of relativity in such a way so as to explain gravitational phenomena. This was the most natural and simplest path to be taken. These investigations did not fit in with…
We propose general guidelines in order to incorporate the geometrical description of gravity in quantum field theory and address the problem of UV divergences non-perturbatively. In our aproach, each virtual particle in a Feynman graph…
Feynman gave a famous elementary introduction to quantum theory by discussing the thin-film reflection of light. We make his discussion mathematically rigorous, keeping it elementary, using his other idea. The resulting model leads to…
The confrontation between Einstein's gravitation theory and experimental results, notably binary pulsar data, is summarized and its significance discussed. Experiment and theory agree at the 10^{-3} level. All the basic structures of…
Quantum General Relativity (QGR), sometimes called Loop Quantum Gravity, has matured over the past fifteen years to a mathematically rigorous candidate quantum field theory of the gravitational field. The features that distinguish it from…
Einstein's theory of general relativity describes gravity as the interaction of particles with space-time geometry, as opposed to interacting with a physical fluid, as in the old gravitational aether theories. Moreover, any theoretical…
We present a geometric scalar theory of gravity. Our proposal will be described using the "background field method" introduced by Gupta, Feynman and others as a field theory formulation of general relativity. We analyze previous criticisms…
The Einstein-Hilbert Lagrangian for gravity is non-renormalizable at loop level. However, it can be treated in the effective field theory framework which means that gravity as an effective theory can be renormalized when a proper expansion…
The historical and conceptual foundations of General Relativity are revisited, putting the main focus on the physical meaning of the invariant ds, the Equivalence Principle, and the precise interpretation of spacetime geometry. It is argued…
The genesis of Feynman's original approach to QED is reviewed. The main ideas of his original presentation at the Pocono Conference are discussed and compared with the ones involved in his action-at-distance formulation of classical…
Scalar fields have had a long and controversial life in gravity theories, having progressed through many deaths and resurrections. The first scientific gravity theory, Newton's, was that of a scalar potential field, so it was natural for…