Related papers: Diffeomorphism invariant classical-quantum path in…
In these lectures we describe how a theory of quantum gravity may be constructed in terms of a lattice formulation based on so-called causal dynamical triangulations (CDT). We discuss how the continuum limit can be obtained and how to…
We investigate path integral quantization of two versions of unimodular gravity. First a fully diffeomorphism-invariant theory is analyzed, which does not include a unimodular condition on the metric, while still being equivalent to other…
Over the past five years, there has been significant progress on the problem of quantization of diffeomorphism covariant field theories with {\it local} degrees of freedom. The absence of a background space-time metric in these theories…
Much like the action, diffeomorphism invariance can be used to fix the form of the path integral measure in quantum gravity. Moreover, since there is a redundancy between what constitutes "the action" and what constitutes "the measure" one…
When gravity is sourced by a quantum system, there is tension between its role as the mediator of a fundamental interaction, which is expected to acquire nonclassical features, and its role in determining the properties of spacetime, which…
Viewing gravitational energy-momentum as equal by observation, but different in essence from inertial energy-momentum naturally leads to the gauge theory of volume-preserving diffeormorphisms of an inner Minkowski space which can describe…
We describe a theory of quantum gravity which is based on the assumption that the spacetime structure at small distances is given by a piecewise linear (PL) 4-manifold corresponding to a triangulation of a smooth 4-manifold. The fundamental…
We show that if a discrete quantum gravity is not classical, then it cannot be generated by an isometric dynamics. In particular, we show that if the quantum measure {\mu} (or equivalently the decoherence functional) is generated by an…
The gauge symmetry of classical general relativity under space-time diffeomorphisms implies that any path integral quantization which can be interpreted as a sum over space-time geometries, gives rise to a formal invariant of smooth…
A simple diffeomorphism invariant theory of connections with the non-compact structure group R of real numbers is quantized. The theory is defined on a four-dimensional 'space-time' by an action resembling closely the self-dual Plebanski…
We formally prove the existence of a quantization procedure that makes the path integral of a general diffeomorphism-invariant theory of gravity, with fixed total spacetime volume, equivalent to that of its unimodular version. This is…
To guarantee the stability of the cosmological constant sector against radiative corrections coming from quantum matter fields, one of the most natural ingredients to invoke is the symmetry under scale transformations of the gravitational…
It is rather well-known that spacetime singularities are not covariant under field redefinitions. A manifestly covariant approach to singularities in classical gravity was proposed in arXiv:2008.09387. In this paper, we start to extend this…
One of several possibilities to construct a quantum theory of gravity is employing the Feynman path integral. This approach is plagued by some problems: the integration measure is not uniquely defined, the Einstein-Hilbert action unbounded,…
We study a model for quantum gravity on a circle in which the notion of a classical metric tensor is replaced by a quantum metric with an inhomogeneous transformation law under diffeomorphisms. This transformation law corresponds to the…
We study the quatum to classical transition process in the context of quantum field theory. Extending the influence functional formalism of Feynman and Vernon, we study the decoherence process for self-interacting quantum fields in flat…
We review and discuss the role of diffeomorphism symmetry in quantum gravity models. Such models often involve a discretization of the space-time manifold as a regularization method. Generically this leads to a breaking of the symmetries to…
We study the transition from the full quantum mechanical description of physical systems to an approximate classical stochastic one. Our main tool is the identification of the closed-time-path (CTP) generating functional of Schwinger and…
What if gravity is classical? If true, a consistent co-existence of classical gravity and quantum matter requires that gravity exhibit irreducible fluctuations. These fluctuations can mediate classical correlations, but not quantum…
We investigate the action of diffeomorphisms in the context of Hamiltonian Gravity. By considering how the diffeomorphism-invariant Hilbert space of Loop Quantum Gravity should be constructed, we formulate a physical principle by demanding,…