Related papers: Causal Set Quantum Gravity and the Hard Problem of…
In theories of communication, it is usually presumed that the involved parties perform actions in a fixed causal order. However, practical and fundamental reasons can induce uncertainties in the causal order. Here we show that a maximal…
Causal sets are particular partially ordered sets which have been proposed as a basic model for discrete space-time in quantum gravity. We show that the class C of all countable past-finite causal sets contains a unique causal set (U,<)…
One could begin a study like the present one by simply postulating that our universe is four-dimensional. There are ample reasons for doing this. Experience, observation and experiment all point to the fact that we inhabit a…
General relativity is a background-independent theory of a dynamical classical spacetime geometry. Quantum theory is formulated in a classical spacetime, as an intrinsically probabilistic, contextual theory of non-classical, interfering…
Within the causal set approach to quantum gravity, a discrete analog of a spacelike region is a set of unrelated elements, or an antichain. In the continuum approximation of the theory, a moment-of-time hypersurface is well represented by…
We discuss Cosmic Microwave Background constraints on the causal set theory of quantum gravity, which has made testable predictions about the nature of dark energy. We flesh out previously discussed heuristic constraints by showing how the…
A causal set C can describe a discrete spacetime, but this discrete spacetime is not quantum, because C is endowed with Boolean logic, as it does not allow cycles. In a quasi-ordered set Q, cycles are allowed. In this paper, we consider a…
Although general relativity is a predictively successful theory, it treats matter as classical rather than as quantum. For this reason, it will have to be replaced by a more fundamental quantum theory of gravity. Attempts to formulate a…
We describe the construction of quantum gravity, i.e. of a theory of self-interacting massless spin-2 quantum gauge fields, the gravitons, on flat space-time, in the framework of causal perturbation theory.
Causal set theory offers a simple and elegant picture of discrete physics. But the vast majority of causal sets look nothing at all like continuum spacetimes, and must be excluded in some way to obtain a realistic theory. I describe recent…
This is a chapter of the planned monograph "Out of Nowhere: The Emergence of Spacetime in Quantum Theories of Gravity", co-authored by Nick Huggett and Christian W\"uthrich and under contract with Oxford University Press. (More information…
We describe an algebraic way to code the causal information of a discrete spacetime. The causal set C is transformed to a description in terms of the causal pasts of the events in C. This is done by an evolving set, a functor which to each…
Causal set theory is a discrete model of spacetime that retains a notion of causal structure. We understand how to construct causal sets that approximate a given spacetime, but most causal sets are not at all manifold-like, and must be…
The process of cognition is analysed to adjust the set theory to physical description. Postulates and basic definitions are revised. The specific sets of predicates, called presets, corresponding to the physical objects identified by an…
Treating the time of an event as a quantum variable, we derive a scheme in which superpositions in time are used to perform operations in an indefinite causal order. We use some aspects of a recently developed space-time-symmetric formalism…
The causal structure of space-time offers a natural notion of an opposite or orthogonal in the logical sense, where the opposite of a set is formed by all points non time-like related with it. We show that for a general space-time the…
How subjective experience (i.e., consciousness) arises out of objective material processes has been called the hard problem. The neuroscience of consciousness has set out to find the sufficient conditions for consciousness and theoretical…
We show how uncertainty in the causal structure of field theory is essentially inevitable when one includes quantum gravity. This includes the fact that lightcones are ill-defined in such a theory. This effect is small in the effective…
In ordinary, non-relativistic, quantum physics, time enters only as a parameter and not as an observable: a state of a physical system is specified at a given time and then evolved according to the prescribed dynamics. While the state can,…
We shall present here the causal interpretation of canonical quantum gravity in terms of new variables. Then we shall apply it to the minisuperspace of cosmology. A vacuum solution of quantum cosmology is obtained and the Bohmian trajectory…