Related papers: Topology, Decoherence, and Semiclassical Gravity
We argue that semiclassical gravity can be made consistent if quantum systems source gravity only when they participate in non-gravitational interactions that lead to environment-induced decoherence. Outside such decoherence-based events,…
There has been considerable interest over the past years in investigating the role of gravity in quantum phenomenon such as entanglement and decoherence. In particular, gravitational time dilation is believed to decohere superpositions of…
One of the main technical obstacles in constructing a consistent theory of quantum gravity is that the metric itself defines the causal structure required for quantization. This motivates implementing quantum aspects of gravity through an…
One of the most important issues in quantum gravity is to identify its semi-classical regime. First the issue is to define for we mean by a semi-classical theory of quantum gravity, then we would like to use it to extract physical…
It was previously argued that the phenomenon of quantum gravitational decoherence described by the Wheeler-DeWitt equation is responsible for the emergence of the arrow of time. Here we show that the characteristic spatio-temporal scales of…
We elaborate the recently introduced asymptotically exact semiclassical quantum gravity derived from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation by finding a particular coherent state representation of a quantum scalar field in which the back-reaction of…
We discuss some subtleties which arise in the semiclassical approximation to quantum gravity. We show that integrability conditions prevent the existence of Tomonaga-Schwinger time functions on the space of three-metrics but admit them on…
The problem of time is one of the most relevant open issues in canonical quantum gravity. Although there is a huge literature about this topic, a commonly accepted solution has not been found yet. Here, we focus on the semiclassical…
Any quantum theory of gravity which treats the gravitational constant as a dynamical variable has to address the issue of superpositions of states corresponding to different eigenvalues. We show how the unobservability of such…
We discuss the derivation of the so-called semi-classical equations for both mini-superspace and dilaton gravity. We find that there is no systematic derivation of a semi-classical theory in which quantum mechanics is formulated in a…
Strategies intended to resolve the problem of time in quantum gravity by means of emergent or hidden timefunctions are considered in the arena of relational particle toy models. In situations with `heavy' and `light' degrees of freedom, two…
The emergent semiclassical time approach to resolving the problem of time in quantum gravity involves heavy slow degrees of freedom providing via an approximately Hamilton-Jacobi equation an approximate timestandard with respect to which…
This paper gives an elementary introduction to some of the conceptual problems of quantum cosmology. Contents: 1. Why quantum cosmology? 2. Time in quantum gravity 3.Decoherence and the recovery of the Schrodinger equation 4. The direction…
Both the additional non-linear term in the Schr\"odinger equation and the additional non-Hamiltonian term in the von Neumann equation, proposed to ensure localisation and decoherence of macro-objects, resp., contain the same Newtonian…
Any acceptable quantum gravity theory must allow us to recover the classical spacetime in the appropriate limit. Moreover, the spacetime geometrical notions should be intrinsically tied to the behavior of the matter that probes them. We…
A canonical quantisation of the coordinates of the spacetime within the general relativity theory is proposed. This quantisation will depend on the observer but it provides an interesting perspective on the problem of relating the…
We give an introduction into quantum cosmology with emphasis on its conceptual parts. After a general motivation we review the formalism of canonical quantum gravity on which discussions of quantum cosmology are usually based. We then…
We argue that, in order to obtain decoherence of spacetime, we should consider quantum conformal metric fluctuations of spacetime. This could be the required environment in the problem of selfmeasurement of spacetime in quantum gravity.
Gravitational decoherence (GD) refers to the effects of gravity in actuating the classical appearance of a quantum system. Because the underlying processes involve issues in general relativity (GR), quantum field theory (QFT) and quantum…
A recently introduced discrete formalism allows to solve the problem of time in quantum gravity in a relational manner. Quantum mechanics formulated with a relational time is not exactly unitary and implies a fundamental mechanism for…