Related papers: New directions in Background Independent Quantum G…
We argue that the demand of background independence in a quantum theory of gravity calls for an extension of standard geometric quantum mechanics. We discuss a possible kinematical and dynamical generalization of the latter by way of a…
We recapitulate the scheme of emergent gravity to highlight how a background independent quantum gravity can be defined by quantizing spacetime itself.
The aim of this paper is to explain carefully the arguments behind the assertion that the correct quantum theory of gravity must be background independent. We begin by recounting how the debate over whether quantum gravity must be…
Background independence is often emphasized as an important property of a quantum theory of gravity that takes seriously the geometrical nature of general relativity. In a background-independent formulation, quantum gravity should determine…
It is generally believed that a full-fledged theory of quantum gravity should exhibit background independence and diffeomorphism invariance. In its most general form, the latter comprises field redefinitions, which are diffeomorphisms in…
We review quantum causal histories starting with their interpretations as a quantum field theory on a causal set and a quantum geometry. We discuss the difficulties that background independent theories based on quantum geometry encounter in…
Loop quantum gravity, a non-perturbative and manifestly background free, quantum theory of gravity implies that at the kinematical level the spatial geometry is discrete in a specific sense. The spirit of background independence also…
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…
Any canonical quantum theory can be understood to arise from the compatibility of the statistical geometry of distinguishable observations with the canonical Poisson structure of Hamiltonian dynamics. This geometric perspective offers a…
The application of quantum theory to gravity is beset with many technical and conceptual problems. After a short tour d'horizon of recent attempts to master those problems by the introduction of new approaches, we show that the aim, a…
The recent formulation of locally covariant quantum field theory may open the way towards a background independent perturbative formulation of Quantum Gravity.
One of the many conceptual difficulties in the development of quantum gravity is the role of a background geometry for the structure of quantum field theory. To some extent the problem can be solved by the principle of local covariance. The…
This paper concerns what Background Independence itself is (as opposed to some particular physical theory that is background independent). The notions presented mostly arose from a layer-by-layer analysis of the facets of the Problem of…
We introduce the notion of background independent quantum field theory. The distinguishing feature of this theory is that the dynamics can be formulated without recourse to a background metric structure. We show in a simple model how the…
The goal of this article is to present an introduction to loop quantum gravity -a background independent, non-perturbative approach to the problem of unification of general relativity and quantum physics, based on a quantum theory of…
We describe the definition and the role background independence and the closely related notion of diffeomorphism invariance play in modern string theory. These important concepts are transformed by a new understanding of gauge redundancies…
We investigate the possibility that a background independent quantum theory of gravity is not a theory of quantum geometry. We provide a way for global spacetime symmetries to emerge from a background independent theory without geometry. In…
I review here some motivations to consider a theory of gravity based on independent metric and connection, and its status as a quantum theory.
There is a precise sense in which the requirement of background independence suffices to uniquely select the kinematics of loop quantum gravity (LQG). Specifically, the fundamental kinematic algebra of LQG admits a unique diffeomorphism…
We describe the construction of quantum gravity, i.e. of a theory of self-interacting massless spin-2 quantum gauge fields, the gravitons, on flat space-time, in the framework of causal perturbation theory.