Related papers: Reply to "A Comment on Singularities in Quantum Co…
The observational evidence for the recent acceleration of the universe demonstrates that canonical theories of cosmology and particle physics are incomplete---if not incorrect---and that new physics is out there, waiting to be discovered. A…
Difficulties around the idea of spontaneous breaking of time translation symmetry in a closed quantum mechanical system are identified, and then overcome in a simple model. The possibility of ordering in imaginary time is also discussed.
Inflationary cosmology successfully accounts for the observed properties of primordial fluctuations using quantum field theory in an expanding background. However, the quantum nature of these fluctuations has not been experimentally…
We derive some Quantum Central Limit Theorems for expectation values of macroscopically coarse-grained observables, which are functions of coarse-grained hermitean operators. Thanks to the hermicity constraints, we obtain positive-definite…
We discuss Cosmic Microwave Background constraints on the causal set theory of quantum gravity, which has made testable predictions about the nature of dark energy. We flesh out previously discussed heuristic constraints by showing how the…
In this talk we discuss the cosmic singularity. We motivate the need to correct general relativity in the study of singularities, and mention the kind of corrections provided by string theory. We review how string theory resolves time-like…
A fully consistent linear perturbation theory for cosmology is derived in the presence of quantum corrections as they are suggested by properties of inverse volume operators in loop quantum gravity. The underlying constraints present a…
It has been shown that the primordial perturbations sourced by inflation are driven to classicality by unitary evolution alone. However, their coupling with the environment such as photons and subsequent decoherence renders the cosmological…
We apply the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation to the Wheeler-DeWitt equation for the quantum FRW cosmological model with a minimal massless scalar field. We find that the quantum FRW cosmological model has quantum potential dominated…
This paper explains why spacetime singularities do not constitute a breakdown of physical laws, and points out that the difference between the metrics at singularities and those outside of singularities is factual, rather than nomological.
Classical models for dark energy can exhibit a variety of singularities, many of which occur for scale factors much bigger than the Planck length. We address here the issue whether some of these singularities, the big freeze and the big…
It is shown that the violation of unitarity observed in space/time noncommutative field theories is due to an improper definition of quantum field theory on noncommutative spacetime.
We discuss the question of time in a Bianchi I quantum cosmology in the framework of singularity avoidance. We show that time parameters fall into two distinct classes, that are such that the time development of the wave function either…
It is often conjectured that a choice of time function merely sets up a frame for the quantum evolution of gravitational field, meaning that all choices should be in some sense compatible. In order to explore this conjecture (and the…
We consider here the genericity aspects of spacetime singularities that occur in cosmology and in gravitational collapse. The singularity theorems (that predict the occurrence of singularities in general relativity) allow the singularities…
We argue that the notion of identical particles is no longer well defined in quantum systems governed by non-commutative deformations of space-time symmetries. Such models are characterized by four-momentum space given by a non-abelian Lie…
It has frequently been claimed in the literature that the classical physical predictions of scalar tensor theories of gravity depend on the conformal frame in which the theory is formulated. We argue that this claim is false, and that all…
Counterfactuals in quantum theory are briefly reviewed and it is argued that they are very different from counterfactuals considered in the general philosophical literature. The issue of time symmetry of quantum counterfactuals is…
A two boundary quantum mechanics without time ordered causal structure is advocated as consistent theory. The apparent causal structure of usual "near future" macroscopic phenomena is attributed to a cosmological asymmetry and to rules…
The suggestion that particles of the same kind may be indistinguishable in a fundamental sense, even so that challenges to traditional notions of individuality and identity may arise, has first come up in the context of classical…