Related papers: Dynamics of Causal Sets
Non-perturbative theories of quantum gravity inevitably include configurations that fail to resemble physically reasonable spacetimes at large scales. Often, these configurations are entropically dominant and pose an obstacle to obtaining…
A new approach to quantum gravity is described which joins the loop representation formulation of the canonical theory to the causal set formulation of the path integral. The theory assigns quantum amplitudes to special classes of causal…
In this thesis we investigate the importance of causality in non-perturbative approaches to quantum gravity. Firstly, causal sets are introduced as a simple kinematical model for causal geometry. It is shown how causal sets could account…
Causal set theory offers a simple and elegant picture of discrete physics. But the vast majority of causal sets look nothing at all like continuum spacetimes, and must be excluded in some way to obtain a realistic theory. I describe recent…
A covariant causal set (c-causet) is a causal set that is invariant under labeling. Such causets are well-behaved and have a rigid geometry that is determined by a sequence of positive integers called the shell sequence. We first consider…
Quantum theory is a probabilistic theory with fixed causal structure. General relativity is a deterministic theory but where the causal structure is dynamic. It is reasonable to expect that quantum gravity will be a probabilistic theory…
This paper is based on the causal set approach to discrete quantum gravity. We first describe a classical sequential growth process (CSGP) in which the universe grows one element at a time in discrete steps. At each step the process has the…
The proposed theory of causally structured discrete fields studies integer values on directed edges of a self-similar graph with a propagation rule, which we define as a set of valid combinations of integer values and edge directions around…
This paper provides a thorough introduction to the causal set hypothesis aimed at students, and other interested persons, with some knowledge of general relativity and nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. I elucidate the arguments for why the…
The causal set approach to the problem of quantum gravity is based on the hypothesis that spacetime is fundamentally discrete. Spacetime discreteness opens the door to novel types of dynamical law for cosmology and the Classical Sequential…
This paper offers suggested improvements to the causal sets program in discrete gravity, which treats spacetime geometry as an emergent manifestation of causal structure at the fundamental scale. This viewpoint, which I refer to as the…
Causal set theory provides a model of discrete spacetime in which spacetime events are represented by elements of a causal set---a locally finite, partially ordered set in which the partial order represents the causal relationships between…
More often than not, recently popular structuralist interpretations of physical theories leave the central concept of a structure insufficiently precisified. The incipient causal sets approach to quantum gravity offers a paradigmatic case…
A recently proposed algebraic representation of the causal set model of the small-scale structure of space-time of Sorkin et al. is briefly reviewed and expanded. The algebraic model suggested, called quantum causal set, is physically…
There are numerous indications that a discrete substratum underlies continuum spacetime. Any fundamentally discrete approach to quantum gravity must provide some prescription for how continuum properties emerge from the underlying…
This paper is based on a covariant causal set (c-causet) approach to discrete quantum gravity. A c-causet is a partially ordered set $(x,<)$ that is invariant under labeling. We first consider the microscopic picture which describes the…
Causal set theory is a discrete model of spacetime that retains a notion of causal structure. We understand how to construct causal sets that approximate a given spacetime, but most causal sets are not at all manifold-like, and must be…
In a previous paper, the author introduced a covariant causet ($c$-causet) approach to discrete quantum gravity. A $c$-causet is a finite partially ordered set that is invariant under labeling. The invariant labeling of a $c$-causet $x$…
The spacetime discreteness of causal set theory has enabled the formulation of novel spacetime dynamics. In these so-called "growth" dynamics, a causal set spacetime is generated probabilistically by means of a random walk on certain tree…
Quantum Gravity by Causal Dynamical Triangulation has over the last few years emerged as a serious contender for a nonperturbative description of the theory. It is a nonperturbative implementation of the sum-over-histories, which relies on…