Related papers: Diffeomorphism Invariance and General Relativity
Bohmian mechanics and spontaneous collapse models are theories that overcome the quantum measurement problem. While they are naturally formulated for non-relativistic systems, it has proven difficult to formulate Lorentz invariant…
We show that representations of the group of spacetime diffeomorphism and the Dirac algebra both arise in a phase-space histories version of canonical general relativity. This is the general-relativistic analogue of the novel time structure…
We propose fundamental scale invariance as a new theoretical principle beyond renormalizability. Quantum field theories with fundamental scale invariance admit a scale-free formulation of the functional integral and effective action in…
The history of general relativity suggests that in absence of experimental data, constructing a theory on philosophical first principles can lead to a very useful theory as well as to ground-breaking insights about physical reality. The two…
The task of quantizing gravity is compared with Einstein's relativization of gravity. The philosophical and physical foundations of general relativity are briefly reviewed. The Ehlers-Pirani-Schild scheme of operationally determining the…
It might seem that a choice of a time coordinate in Hamiltonian formulations of general relativity breaks the full four-dimensional diffeomorphism covariance of the theory. This is not the case. We construct explicitly the complete set of…
Symmetry is often treated in philosophy of physics as an interpretive problem. A particularly lively dispute concerns local symmetries: do they indicate surplus structure that ought to be expunged, or are they merely a harmless redundancy?…
In this paper we work out in detail a new proposal to define rigorously a sector of loop quantum gravity at the diffeomorphism invariant level corresponding to homogeneous and isotropic cosmologies, and propose how to compare in detail the…
We study certain aspects of the recently proposed notion of nonrelativistic diffeomorphism invariance. In particular, we consider specific examples of invariant actions, extended gauge symmetry as well as an application to the theory of…
Contrary to what is often stated, a fundamental spacetime discreteness need not contradict Lorentz invariance. A causal set's discreteness is in fact locally Lorentz invariant, and we recall the reasons why. For illustration, we introduce a…
We provide a new formulation of nonrelativistic diffeomorphism invariance. It is generated by localising the usual global Galilean Symmetry. The correspondence with the type of diffeomorphism invariant models currently in vogue in the…
We point out a generic inconsistency of the coupling of ordinary gravity as described by general relativity with matter invariant under the subgroup of unimodular diffeomorphisms (TDiffs), and some previously studied exceptions are pointed…
A challenging issue in General Relativity concerns the determination of the manifestly-covariant continuum Hamiltonian structure underlying the Einstein field equations and the related formulation of the corresponding covariant…
The construction of Dirac observables, that is gauge invariant objects, in General Relativity is technically more complicated than in other gauge theories such as the standard model due to its more complicated gauge group which is closely…
A Weyl invariant extension of Einstein gravity is studied. It simply consists in the group averaging of Einstein's action under Weyl transformations. Contradicting cherished beliefs, a conformal anomaly is found in the trace of the…
The usual quantization of a classical space-time field does not touch the non-geometrical character of quantum mechanics. We believe that the deep problems of unification of general relativity and quantum mechanics are rooted in this poor…
Decoherence may not solve all of the measurement problems of quantum mechanics. It is proposed that a solution to these problems may be to allow that superpositions describe physically real systems in the following sense. Each quantum…
We study a deformation of infinitesimal diffeomorphisms of a smooth manifold. The deformation is based on a general twist. This leads to a differential geometry on a noncommutative algebra of functions whose product is a star-product. The…
We present a scale-invariant theory, conformal gravity, which closely resembles the geometrodynamical formulation of general relativity (GR). While previous attempts to create scale-invariant theories of gravity have been based on Weyl's…
A theory of special inconstancy, in which some fundamental physical constants such as the fine-structure and gravitational constants may vary, is proposed in pregeometry. In the special theory of inconstancy, the \alpha-G relation of…