Related papers: Truly Lorentzian quantum cosmology
We argue that the Lorentzian path integral is a better starting point for quantum cosmology than the Euclidean version. In particular, we revisit the mini-superspace calculation of the Feynman path integral for quantum gravity with a…
We evaluate the Lorentzian gravitational path integral in the presence of non-vanishing torsion with the application of the Picard-Lefschetz theory for minisuperspaces corresponding to a number of phenomenological bouncing cosmological…
Quantum mechanical transition amplitudes directly tells the probability of each transition and which one is more favourable. Path-integrals offers a systematic methodology to compute this quantum mechanical process in a consistent manner.…
In these lecture notes, I describe the motivation behind a recent formulation of a non-perturbative gravitational path integral for Lorentzian (instead of the usual Euclidean) space-times, and give a pedagogical introduction to its main…
We construct a combined non-perturbative path integral over geometries and topologies for two-dimensional Lorentzian quantum gravity. The Lorentzian structure is used in an essential way to exclude geometries with unacceptably large…
We construct an effective cosmological spin-foam model for a (2+1) dimensional spatially flat universe, discretized on a hypercubical lattice, containing both space- and time-like regions. Our starting point is the recently proposed…
Making the Lorentzian path integral for quantum gravity well-defined and computable has been a long standing challenge. In this work we adopt the recently proposed effective spin foam models to the Lorentzian case. This defines a path…
A well-defined regularized path integral for Lorentzian quantum gravity in three and four dimensions is constructed, given in terms of a sum over dynamically triangulated causal space-times. Each Lorentzian geometry and its associated…
In two space-time dimensions, there is a theory of Lorentzian quantum gravity which can be defined by a rigorous, non-perturbative path integral and is inequivalent to the well-known theory of (Euclidean) quantum Liouville gravity. It has a…
My answer to the question in the title is "No". In support of this point of view, we analyze some examples of saddle-point methods, especially as applied to quantum "tunneling" in nonrelativistic particle mechanics and in cosmology. Along…
We study how meaningful physical predictions can arise in nonperturbative quantum gravity in a closed Lorentzian universe. In such settings, recent developments suggest that the quantum gravitational Hilbert space is one-dimensional and…
In the Hartle-Hawking ``no boundary'' approach to quantum cosmology, a real tunneling geometry is a configuration that represents a transition from a compact Riemannian spacetime to a Lorentzian universe. I complete an earlier proof that in…
Quantum cosmology aims at elucidating the beginning of our Universe. Back in early 80's, Vilenkin and Hartle-Hawking put forward the "tunneling from nothing" and "no boundary" proposals. Recently there has been renewed interest in this…
Recent analysis of quantum cosmology has focused on the Lorentzian path integral formulations of both the no-boundary and tunneling proposals. However, it has been criticized that the wave function for linearized perturbations around a…
Loop quantum cosmology predicts that quantum gravity effects resolve the big-bang singularity and replace it by a cosmic bounce. Furthermore, loop quantum cosmology can also modify the form of primordial cosmological perturbations, for…
Pre-gauging the cosmological scale factor $a(t)$ does not introduce unphysical degrees of freedom into the exact FLRW classical solution. It seems to lead, however, to a non-dynamical mini superspace. The missing ingredient, a generalised…
We carry out the nonperturbative canonical quantization of several types of cosmological models that have already been studied in the geometrodynamic formulation using the complex path-integral approach. We establish a relation between the…
Three-dimensional Lorentzian quantum gravity, expressed as the continuum limit of a nonperturbative sum over spacetimes, is tantalizingly close to being amenable to analytical methods, and some of its properties have been described in terms…
The scheme of using the Chern-Simons action to regularize the gravitational Hamiltonian constraint is extended to including the Lorentzian term in the $k=0$ cosmological model. The Euclidean term and the Lorenzian term are thus regularized…
Quantum cosmology implies corrections to the classical equations of motion which may lead to significant departures from the classical trajectory, especially at high curvature near the big-bang singularity. Corrections could in principle be…