Related papers: Quantum gravity and scale symmetry in cosmology
The Planck scale is usually believed to be an unpassable wall. Putting a cutoff there and thinking of it as a quantized spacetime entity shows that. However, this is exactly the cause of many problems in quantum gravity. The cosmological…
We compute non-perturbative flow equations for the couplings of quantum gravity in fourth order of a derivative expansion. The gauge invariant functional flow equation for arbitrary metrics allows us to extract $\beta$-functions for all…
A quantum field theory formalism is reviewed that leads to a self-consistent, finite quantum gravity, Yang-Mills and Higgs theory, which is unitary and gauge invariant to all orders of perturbation theory. The gauge hierarchy problem is…
Recently it has been argued that a correct reading of the quantum fluctuations of the vacuum could lead to a solution to the cosmological constant problem. In this work we critically examine such a proposal, finding it questionable due to…
We investigate the problem of metric fluctuations in the presence of the vacuum fluctuations of matter fields and critically assess the usual assertion that vacuum energy implies a Planckian cosmological constant. A new stochastic classical…
A central aspect of the cosmological constant problem is to understand why vacuum energy does not gravitate. In order to account for this observation, while allowing for nontrivial dynamics of the quantum vacuum, we motivate a novel…
The semiclassical gravity describes gravitational back-reactions of the classical spacetime interacting with quantum matter fields but the quantum effects on the background is formally defined as higher derivative curvatures. These induce…
A free scalar field minimally coupled to gravity model is quantized and the Wheeler-DeWitt equation in minisuperspace is solved analytically, exhibiting positive and negative frequency modes. The analysis is performed for positive, negative…
The standard formulation of the cosmological constant problem is based on one critical assumption---the spacetime is homogeneous and isotropic, which is true only on cosmological scales. However, this problem is caused by extremely small…
I argue that a solution to the cosmological constant problem is to assume that the expectation value of the quantum vacuum stress-energy tensor is proportional to the metric tensor with a negative energy density and positive pressure. This…
We review selected aspects of unimodular gravity and we discuss its viability as a solution of the old cosmological constant problem. In unimodular gravity the cosmological constant is promoted to a global degree of freedom. We highlight…
The standard inflationary version of the origin of the cosmic structure as the result of the quantum fluctuations during the inflationary stage is less than fully satisfactory: how exactly does the Universe transit from a homogeneous and…
Loop quantum cosmology is an application of recent developments for a non-perturbative and background independent quantization of gravity to a cosmological setting. Characteristic properties of the quantization such as discreteness of…
We examine the general issue of whether a scale dependent cosmological constant can be consistent with general covariance, a problem that arises naturally in the treatment of quantum gravitation where coupling constants generally run as a…
We study the evolution of quantum fluctuations of gravity around an inflationary solution in renormalizable quantum gravity, in which the initial scalar-fluctuation dominance is shown by the background-free nature expressed by a special…
The study of physics at the Planck scale has garnered significant attention due to its implications for understanding the fundamental nature of the universe. At the Planck scale, quantum fluctuations challenge the classical notion of…
According to cosmological inflation, the inhomogeneities in our universe are of quantum mechanical origin. This scenario is phenomenologically very appealing as it solves the puzzles of the standard hot big bang model and naturally explains…
Using the Ashtekar-Sen variables of loop quantum gravity, a new class of exact solutions to the equations of quantum cosmology is found for gravity coupled to a scalar field, that corresponds to inflating universes. The scalar field, which…
A scenario based on the scale invariance for explaining the vanishing cosmological constant (CC) is discussed. I begin with a notice on the miraculous fact of the CC problem that the vacuum energies totally vanish at each step of…
In the present article, which is the first part of a work in three parts, we build an equation of quantum gravity. This equation is tensorial, is equivalent to general relativity in vacuum, but differs completely from general relativity…