Related papers: Observers seeing gravitational Hilbert spaces: abs…
One of the fundamental problems in quantum gravity is to describe the experience of a gravitating observer in generic spacetimes. In this paper, we develop a framework for describing non-perturbative physics relative to an observer using…
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…
A straightforward gravitational path integral calculation implies that closed universes are trivial, described by a one dimensional Hilbert space. Two recent papers by Harlow-Usatyuk-Zhao and Abdalla-Antonini-Iliesiu-Levine have sought to…
Recent arguments based on the quantum extremal surface formula or the gravitational path integral have given fairly compelling evidence that the Hilbert space of quantum gravity in a closed universe is one-dimensional and real. How can this…
Quantum gravity in a closed universe faces two a priori distinct yet seemingly related issues: the problem of time and the fact that its Hilbert space dimension is one. Both have been argued to be resolvable by formulating physics relative…
Recent advances in semiclassical gravity, both in our understanding of the gravitational path integral and the algebraic structure of a gravitating subregion, rely on the presence of an observer to obtain a nontrivial Hilbert space for…
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…
Hilbert spaces in theories of gravity are notoriously subtle due to the Hamiltonian constraints, particularly regarding the inner product. To demystify this subject, we review and extend a collection of ideas in canonical gravity, and…
Motivated by the recent developments of pseudo-hermitian quantum mechanics, we analyze the structure of unbounded metric operators in a Hilbert space. It turns out that such operators generate a canonical lattice of Hilbert spaces, that is,…
Position deformation of a Heisenberg algebra and Hilbert space representation of both maximal length and minimal momentum uncertainties may lead to loss of Hermiticity of some operators that generate this algebra. Consequently, the…
In this paper we extend recent ideas about observers and closed universes to theories where observers can be fluctuated into existence in the Hartle-Hawking state. This introduces a phenomenon that was not considered in these earlier…
Several major open problems in cosmology, including the nature of inflation, dark matter, and dark energy, share a common structure: they involve spacetime-filling media with unknown microphysics, and can be probed so far only through their…
Motivated by the recent developments of pseudo-Hermitian quantum mechanics, we analyze the structure generated by unbounded metric operators in a Hilbert space. To that effect, we consider the notions of similarity and quasi-similarity…
A quasi-Hermitian operator is an operator that is similar to its adjoint in some sense, via a metric operator, i.e., a strictly positive self-adjoint operator. Whereas those metric operators are in general assumed to be bounded, we analyze…
We show that the formation of large-scale structures through gravitational instability in the expanding universe can be fully described through a path-integral formalism. We derive the action S[f] which gives the statistical weight…
A review is given of recent work aimed at constructing a quantum theory of cosmology in which all observables refer to information measurable by observers inside the universe. At the classical level the algebra of observables should be…
We generalize recent results in two-dimensional Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity to study factorization of the Hilbert space of eternal black holes in quantum gravity with a negative cosmological constant in any dimension. We approach the problem…
A framework analogous to path integrals in quantum physics is set up for abstract dynamical systems in a W*-algebraic setting. We consider spaces of evolutions, defined in a specific way, of a W*-algebra A as an analogue of spaces of…
We isolate a geometric mechanism that complements the dynamical suppression of macroscopic interference: In a high-dimensional Hilbert space, almost all state vectors are nearly orthogonal, accommodating an exponentially large reservoir of…
The questions of describing observables and observation in quantum gravity appear to be centrally important to its physics. A relational approach holds significant promise, and a classification of different types of relational observables…