Related papers: Kronecker anomalies and gravitational striction
We investigate a class of theories involving a symmetric two-tensor field in Minkowski spacetime with a potential triggering spontaneous violation of Lorentz symmetry. The resulting massless Nambu-Goldstone modes are shown to obey the…
We study the infrared effective theory of gravity that stems from the quantum trace anomaly. Quantum fluctuations of the metric induce running of the cosmological constant and the Newton constant at cosmological scales. By imposing the…
Quantum Heisenberg spin chains with random couplings and spin sizes are studied using a real-space renormalization group technique. These systems belong to a new universality class of disordered quantum spin systems realized in {\it e.g.}…
The cosmological constant problem can be understood as the failure of the decoupling principle behind effective field theory, so that some quantities in the low-energy theory are extremely sensitive to the high-energy properties. While this…
Classical limits of quantum systems are shown to lead to different conceptions of spaces different from the classical one underlying the process of quantization of such systems. The accent is put in situations where traces of…
Several approaches to quantum gravity lead to nonlocal modifications of fields' dynamics. This, in turn, can give rise to nonlocal modifications of quantum mechanics at non-relativistic energies. Here, we analyze the nonlocal…
Field theories with spontaneous Lorentz violation involving an antisymmetric 2-tensor are studied. A general action including nonminimal gravitational couplings is constructed, and features of the Nambu-Goldstone and massive modes are…
Local observables in (perturbative) quantum gravity are notoriously hard to define, since the gauge symmetry of gravity -- diffeomorphisms -- moves points on the manifold. In particular, this is a problem for backgrounds of high symmetry…
We argue that discreteness at the Planck scale (naturally expected to arise from quantum gravity) might manifest in the form of minute violations of energy-momentum conservation of the matter degrees of freedom when described in terms of…
We point out that quantum field theories based on the concept of Clifford space and Clifford algebra valued-fields involve both positive and negative energies. This is a consequence of the indefinite signature (p,q) of the Clifford space.…
We propose a mechanism to describe how a physical quantity, which initially can take continuous values, is restricted within some discrete values after a measurement. As an example of the present theory, in which interplay between coherence…
An oscillating, compact Friedmann universe with a massive conformally coupled scalar field is studied in the framework of quantum cosmology. The scalar field is treated as a perturbation and we look for solutions of the Wheeler-DeWitt…
It is well known that a fundamental theorem of Quantum Field Theory (QFT) set in at spacetime ensures the CPT invariance of the theory. This symmetry is strictly connected to the Lorentz covariance, and consequently to the fundamental…
A quantum hamiltonian which evolves the gravitational field according to time as measured by constant surfaces of a scalar field is defined through a regularization procedure based on the loop representation, and is shown to be finite and…
Effective gravitational field theories with background fields break local Lorentz symmetry and diffeomorphism invariance. Examples include Chern-Simons gravity, massive gravity, and the Standard-Model Extension (SME). The physical…
Quantum inequalities are bounds on negative time-averages of the energy density of a quantum field. They can be used to rule out exotic spacetimes in general relativity. We study quantum inequalities for a scalar field with a background…
Lorentz invariance is one of the fundamental principles of physics, and, as such, it must be experimentally tested. The purpose of this work is to obtain, within the Standard-Model Extension, the dynamics of a Lorentz-violating spinor in a…
A scenario is outlined for quantum measurement, assuming that self-sustaining classicality is the consequence of an attractive gravitational self-interaction acting on massive bodies, and randomness arises already in the classical domain. A…
A satisfactory theory of quantum gravity will very likely require modification of our classical perception of space-time, perhaps by giving it a 'foamy' structure at scales of order the Planck length. This is expected to modify the…
The concept of discrepancy plays an important role in the study of uniformity properties of point sets. For sets of random points, the discrepancy is a random variable. We apply techniques from quantum field theory to translate the problem…