Related papers: Unimodular quantum cosmology in the connection rep…
We offer a new proposal for cosmic singularity resolution based upon a quantum cosmology with a unitary bounce. This proposal is illustrated via a novel quantization of a mini-superspace model in which there can be superpositions of the…
Coupling any interacting quantum mechanical system to gravity in one (time) dimension requires the cosmological constant to belong to the matter energy spectrum and thus to be quantised, even though the gravity sector is free of any quantum…
In hep-th/0506040 we discussed a classically constrained model of gravity. This theory contains known solutions of General Relativity (GR), and admits solutions that are absent in GR. Here we study cosmological implications of some of these…
We examine the singularity resolution issue in quantum gravity by studying a new quantization of standard Friedmann-Robertson-Walker geometrodynamics. The quantization procedure is inspired by the loop quantum gravity programme, and is…
It is argued that quantum states of geometry, like those of particles, should be coherent on light cones of any size. An exact classical solution, the gravitational shock wave of a relativistic point particle, is used to estimate…
In a former paper we proposed a model for the quantization of gravity by working in a bundle $E$ where we realized the Hamilton constraint as the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. However, the corresponding operator only acts in the fibers and not…
Normalizing the Einstein-Hilbert action by the volume functional makes the theory invariant under constant shifts in the Lagrangian. The associated field equations then resemble unimodular gravity whose otherwise arbitrary cosmological…
We showed that the principle of nongravitating vacuum energy, when formulated in the first order formalism, solves the cosmological constant problem. The most appealing formulation of the theory displays a local symmetry associated with the…
Trace-free Einstein gravity, in the absence of matter fields and using the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) metric, is solvable both classically and quantum mechanically. This is achieved by using the conformal time as the time variable and…
We consider that the cosmological constant is associated with the vacuum energy density of a particle physics model. In the path integral formalism of euclidean quantum gravity and in the background of the Robertson Walker metric we…
Unimodular quantum cosmology admits wavepacket solutions that evolve according to a kind of Schr\"odinger equation. Though this theory is equivalent to general relativity on the classical level, its canonical structure is different and the…
A crucial problem in quantum cosmology is a careful analysis of the one-loop semiclassical approximation for the wave function of the universe, after an appropriate choice of mixed boundary conditions. The results for Euclidean quantum…
Group field theory (GFT) models for quantum gravity coupled to a massless scalar field give rise to cosmological models that reproduce the (expanding or contracting) dynamics of homogeneous and isotropic spacetimes in general relativity at…
The quantization of unimodular gravity in minisuperspace leads to a time evolution of states generated by the Hamiltonian, as in usual quantum mechanics. We revisit the analysis made in Ref. \cite{unruh}, extending it to phantom scalar…
It is first argued that radiation by a uniformly accelerated charge in flat space-time indicates the need for a unified geometric theory of gravity and electromagnetism. Such a theory, based on a metric-affine $U_4$ manifold, is constructed…
We propose that gravity be intrinsically quantum-mechanical, so that in the absence of quantum mechanics the geometry of the universe would be Minkowski. We show that in such a situation gravity does not require any independent quantization…
Building upon our recently established correspondence between quantum cosmology and the hydrogen atom [1], we investigate the specific sector of a negative cosmological constant ($\Lambda < 0$) in a flat FLRW universe with dust. While the…
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…
We discuss predictions for cosmology which result from the scaling solution of functional flow equations for a quantum field theory of gravity. A scaling solution is necessary to render quantum gravity renormalizable. Our scaling solution…
In absence of matter Einstein gravity with a cosmological constant $\La$ can be formulated as a scale-free theory depending only on the dimensionless coupling constant G \Lambda where G is Newton constant. We derive the conformal field…