Related papers: Closed universes, factorization, and ensemble aver…
When the semi-positive cosmological constant is dynamical, the naive Euclidean Einstein action is unbounded from below and the Hartle-Hawking wavefunction of the universe is not normalizable. With the inclusion of back-reaction (a crucial…
The probable trajectory of the ground state wave function of the universe arises through a quantum tunneling by gravitational instantons. We calculate the quantum tunneling rate for a $n>2$ dimensional closed Friedmann-Robertson-Walker…
Two approaches to quantization of Freedman's closed Universe are compared. In the first approach, the Shrodinger's norm of the wave function of Universe is used, and in the second approach, the Klein-Gordon's norm is used. The second one…
We apply the framework of Cauchy Slice Holography to the quantization of gravity on closed slices with $\Lambda>0$ (with a focus on $2+1$ dimensions for concreteness). We obtain solutions to the Wheeler-DeWitt equation in a basis of…
In this note we study the $1+1$ dimensional Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity in Lorentzian signature, explicitly constructing the gauge-invariant classical phase space and the quantum Hilbert space and Hamiltonian. We also semiclassically compute…
The Hartle-Hawking wave function in cosmology can be viewed as a decaying wave function with anti-de Sitter (AdS) boundary conditions. We show that the growing wave function in AdS familiar from Euclidean AdS/CFT is equivalent,…
Recent developments in gravitational path integrals indicate that the nonperturbative physical Hilbert space of a closed universe is one-dimensional within each superselection sector. This raises a basic puzzle: how can a unique…
We study closed universes in simple models of two dimensional gravity, such as Jackiw-Teiteilboim (JT) gravity coupled to matter, and a toy topological model that captures the key features of the former. We find there is a stark contrast,…
The wave function for a closed de Sitter universe has been computed, demanding consistency with the recently proposed Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC). We extend the Einstein-Hilbert action to contain a complex-valued term which…
The formulation of two-dimensional quantum gravity at finite cutoff remains an open problem. We revisit this question in JT gravity from two perspectives: the closed-channel bulk path integral and the path integral over boundary curves.…
We extend the formalism of Hamiltonian string bit models of quantum gravity type in two spacetime dimensions to include couplings to particles. We find that the single-particle closed and open universe models respectively behave like empty…
One attractive interpretation of quantum mechanics is the ensemble interpretation, where Quantum Mechanics merely describes a statistical ensemble of objects and not individual objects. But this interpretation does not address why the…
In AdS/CFT partition functions of decoupled copies of the CFT factorize. In bulk computations of such quantities contributions from spacetime wormholes which link separate asymptotic boundaries threaten to spoil this property, leading to a…
We show that the self-interactions present in the effective field theory formulation of general relativity can couple gravitational wave modes and generate nonclassical states. The output of gravitational nonlinear processes can also be…
A unified conceptual foundation of classical and quantum physics is given, free of undefined terms. Ensembles are defined by extending the `probability via expectation' approach of Whittle to noncommuting quantities. This approach carries…
We propose a gravity dual description of the path-integral optimization in conformal field theories arXiv:1703.00456, using Hartle-Hawking wave functions in anti-de Sitter spacetimes. We show that the maximization of the Hartle-Hawking wave…
We consider quantum general relativity in three dimensions with a positive cosmological constant. The Hartle-Hawking wave function is computed as a function of metric data at asymptotic future infinity. The analytic continuation from…
We specify the semiclassical no-boundary wave function of the universe without relying on a functional integral of any kind. The wave function is given as a sum of specific saddle points of the dynamical theory that satisfy conditions of…
The Hartle-Hawking wave function is known to be the Fourier dual of the Chern-Simons or Kodama state reduced to mini-superspace, using an integration contour covering the whole real line. But since the Chern-Simons state is a general…
Recent developments in holographic gravity suggest that spacetime structure may be deeply related to quantum mechanics. In this work, from a different perspective, we demonstrate that wave-particle duality can be interpreted as the…