Related papers: Generalized Symmetry Breaking Scales and Weak Grav…
Continuous global symmetries are expected to be broken by gravity, which can lead to important phenomenological consequences. A prime example is the threat that this poses to the viability of the Peccei-Quinn solution to the strong CP…
We propose a generalization of Yang-Mills theory for which the symmetry algebra does not have to be factorized as mutually commuting algebras of a finite-dimensional Lie algebra and the algebra of functions on base space. The algebra of…
The universality of semiclassical gravity is investigated by considering the behavior of the quantities < \phi^2 > and < {T^a}_b >, along with quantum corrections to the effective Newtonian potential in the far field limits of static…
Generalized geometry provides the framework for a systematic approach to non-symmetric metric gravity theory and naturally leads to an Einstein-Kalb-Ramond gravity theory with totally anti-symmetric contortion. The approach is related to…
There is a serious disconnect between quantum theory and gravity. It occurs at the level of the very foundations of quantum theory, and is far deeper than just the matter of trying to quantize a non-linear theory. We shall examine some of…
It was recently argued that quantum field theories possess one-form and higher-form symmetries, labelled `generalized global symmetries.' In this paper, we describe how those higher-form symmetries can be understood mathematically as…
If gravity respects quantum mechanics, it is important to identify the essential postulates of a quantum framework capable of incorporating gravitational phenomena. Such a construct likely requires elimination or modification of some of the…
We discuss a topological reason why global symmetries are not conserved in quantum gravity, at least when the symmetry comes from compactification of a higher form symmetry. The mechanism is purely topological and does not require any…
I outline motivations for believing that important quantum gravity effects lie beyond the Planck scale at both higher energies and longer distances and times. These motivations arise in part from the study of ultra-high energy scattering,…
The representations of the observable algebra of a low dimensional quantum field theory form the objects of a braided tensor category. The search for gauge symmetry in the theory amounts to finding an algebra which has the same…
Generalized symmetries (also known as categorical symmetries) is a newly developing technique for studying quantum field theories. It has given us new insights into the structure of QFT and many new powerful tools that can be applied to the…
Standard quantum mechanics and gravity are used to estimate the mass and size of idealized gravitating systems where position states of matter and geometry become indeterminate. It is proposed that well-known inconsistencies of standard…
We perform a systematic study of various versions of massive gravity with and without violation of Lorentz symmetry in arbitrary dimension. These theories are well known to possess very unusual properties, unfamiliar from studies of gauge…
Motivated by the similarity of the mathematical structure of Einstein's General Relativity in its weak field limit and of Maxwell's theory of electrodynamics it is shown that there are gravitational analogues of the Josephson effect and the…
The aim of the present article is to give physical meaning to the ingredients of standard gauge field theory in the framework of the scale relativity theory. Owing to the principle of the relativity of scales, the scale-space is not…
We study one-loop divergences in Einstein-Maxwell theory and their implications for the weak gravity conjecture. In particular, we show that renormalization of these divergences leads to positivity of higher-derivative corrections to the…
The search for a theory of quantum gravity is the most fundamental problem in all of theoretical physics, but there are as yet no experimental results at all to guide this endeavor. What seems to be needed is a pragmatic way to test if…
We discuss effects of loss of coherence in low energy quantum systems caused by or related to gravitation, referred to as gravitational decoherence. These effects, resulting from random metric fluctuations, for instance, promise to be…
Consider the interior of a black hole or the very early universe: matter is so densely localized that neither the effects of gravity nor those of quantum theory can be ignored. But this entails that neither general relativity nor quantum…
It is widely believed that combining the uncertainty principle with gravity will lead to an effective minimum length scale. A particular challenge is to specify this scale in a coordinate-independent manner so that covariance is not broken.…