Related papers: Gravitons and Lightcone Fluctuations
The quantum lightcone fluctuations in flat spacetimes with compactified spatial dimensions or with boundaries are examined. The discussion is based upon a model in which the source of the underlying metric fluctuations is taken to be…
We investigate light-cone smearing induced by quantum fluctuations of gravitons and its implications for the ultraviolet structure of quantum field theory. By treating the first-order correction to Synge's world function as an operator, we…
The quantum fluctuations of horizons in Robertson-Walker universes and in the Schwarzschild spacetime are discussed. The source of the metric fluctuations is taken to be quantum linear perturbations of the gravitational field. Lightcone…
A model of a fluctuating lightcone due to a bath of gravitons is further investigated. The flight times of photons between a source and a detector may be either longer or shorter than the light propagation time in the background classical…
We propose an analog model for quantum gravity effects using nonlinear dielectrics. Fluctuations of the spacetime lightcone are expected in quantum gravity, leading to variations in the flight times of pulses. This effect can also arise in…
We investigate the cosmological implications of modified gravities induced by the quantum fluctuations of the gravitational metric. If the metric can be decomposed as the sum of the classical and of a fluctuating part, of quantum origin,…
The effects of small extra dimensions upon quantum fluctuations of the lightcone are examined. We argue that compactified extra dimensions modify the quantum fluctuations of gravitational field so as to induce lightcone fluctuations. This…
We describe space--time fluctuations by means of small fluctuations of the metric on a given background metric. From a minimally coupled Klein--Gordon equation we obtain within a weak-field approximation up to second order and an averaging…
Quantum fluctuations of lightcone are examined in a 4-dimensional spacetime with two parallel planes. Both the Dirichlet and the Neumann boundary conditions are considered. In all the cases we have studied, quantum lightcone fluctuations…
We discuss how compactified extra dimensions may have potentially observable effects which grow as the compactification scale decreases. This arises because of lightcone fluctuations in the uncompactified dimensions which can result in the…
The inclusion of the quantum fluctuations of the metric in the geometric action is a promising avenue for the understanding of the quantum properties of gravity. In this approach the metric is decomposed in the sum of a classical and of a…
A model for observable effects of electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations is presented. The model involves a probe pulse which traverses a slab of nonlinear optical material with a nonzero second order polarizability. We argue that the pulse…
We treat the effects of compactified spatial dimensions on the propagation of light in the uncompactified directions in the context of linearized quantum gravity. We find that the flight times of pulses can fluctuate due to modification of…
We study a model for quantum lightcone fluctuations in which vacuum fluctuations of the electric field and of the squared electric field in a nonlinear dielectric material produce variations in the flight times of probe pulses. When this…
We study how fluctuations of the black hole geometry affect the properties of Hawking radiation. Even though we treat the fluctuations classically, we believe that the results so obtained indicate what might be the effects induced by…
The vacuum fluctuations that induce the transitions and the thermalisation of a uniformly accelerated two level atom are studied in detail. Their energy content is revealed through the weak measurement formalism of Aharonov et al. It is…
We investigate the problem of metric fluctuations in the presence of the vacuum fluctuations of matter fields and critically assess the usual assertion that vacuum energy implies a Planckian cosmological constant. A new stochastic classical…
We argue that quantum-gravitational fluctuations in the space-time background give the vacuum non-trivial optical properties that include diffusion and consequent uncertainties in the arrival times of photons, causing stochastic…
We discuss some effects induced by quantum field fluctuations on mass, inertia and gravitation. Recalling the problem raised by vacuum field fluctuations with respect to inertia and gravitation, we show that vacuum energy differences, such…
In this work, we explore the possibility that quantum fluctuations induce a topology change, in the context of Gravity's Rainbow. A semi-classical approach is adopted, where the graviton one-loop contribution to a classical energy in a…