Related papers: General Covariance and the "Problem of Time" in a …

The ``generic'' family of classical sequential growth dynamics for causal sets provides cosmological models of causal sets which are a testing ground for ideas about the, as yet unknown, quantum theory. In particular we can investigate how…

This paper presents an brief review of some recent work on the causal set approach to quantum gravity. Causal sets are a discretisation of spacetime that allow the symmetries of GR to be preserved in the continuum approximation. One…

The ideas of spacetime discreteness and causality are important in several of the popular approaches to quantum gravity. But if discreteness is accepted as an initial assumption, conflict with Lorentz invariance can be a consequence. The…

A class of diffeomorphism invariant, physical observables, so-called astrometric observables, is introduced. A particularly simple example, the time delay, which expresses the difference between two initially synchronized proper time clocks…

The "problem of time" in canonical quantum gravity refers to the difficulties involved in defining a Hilbert space structure on states -- and local observables on this Hilbert space -- for a theory in which the spacetime metric is treated…

We propose a solution to the problem of time for systems with a single global Hamiltonian constraint. Our solution stems from the observation that, for these theories, conventional gauge theory methods fail to capture the full classical…

Within the context of a recently proposed family of stochastic dynamical laws for causal sets, one can ask whether the universe might have emerged from the quantum-gravity era with a large enough size and with sufficient homogeneity to…

A practical way to deal with the problem of time in quantum cosmology and quantum gravity is proposed. The main tool is effective equations, which mainly restrict explicit considerations to semiclassical regimes but have the crucial…

Since the advent of quantum mechanics we have mainly been concerned with its predictions from the perspective of an external observer. This is in strong contrast to the theory of general relativity, where the physics is governed by the…

The identification of physical subsystems in quantum mechanics as compared to classical mechanics poses significant conceptual challenges, especially in the context of quantum gravity. Traditional approaches associate quantum systems with…

Local observation is an important problem both for the foundations of a quantum theory of gravity and for applications to quantum-cosmological problems such as eternal inflation. While gauge invariant local observables can't be defined, it…

The problem of observables in classical and quantum gravity is a long-standing one. It is sometimes argued that observable quantities should be diffeomorphsm invariant, following the philosophy of Dirac. We argue that diffeomorphism…

In order to construct a quantum theory of gravity, we may have to abandon certain assumptions we were making. In particular, the concept of spacetime as a continuum substratum is questioned. Causal Sets is an attempt to construct a quantum…

In the canonical approach to quantization of gravity, one often uses relational clock variables and an interpretation in terms of conditional probabilities to overcome the problem of time. In this essay we show that these suffer from…

We propose a mathematical structure, based on a noncommutative geometry, which combines essential aspects of general relativity and quantum mechanics, and leads to correct "limiting cases" of both these theories. We quantize a groupoid…

Some of the most outstanding questions in the field of gravitation and geometry remain unsolved as a result of our limited understanding of the global structure of the spacetime geometry and the role played by global spacetime…

We combine the "evolving constants" approach to the construction of observables in canonical quantum gravity with the Page--Wootters formulation of quantum mechanics with a relational time for generally covariant systems. This overcomes the…

We study a collection of discrete Markov chains related to the causal set approach to modeling discrete theories of quantum gravity. The transition probabilities of these chains satisfy a general covariance principle, a causality principle,…

We give an overview of some conceptual difficulties, sometimes called paradoxes, that have puzzled for years the physical interpetation of classical canonical gravity and, by extension, the canonical formulation of generally covariant…

Classically general covariance is found from the idea that a vector is a physical quantity which exists independently of choice of coordinate system and is unchanged by a change of coordinate system. It is often assumed that there exists…