Related papers: Spectral Geometry and Causality
One of the biggest challenges to theoretical physics of our time is to find a background-independent quantum theory of gravity. Today one encounters a profusion of different attempts at quantization, but no fully accepted - or acceptable,…
We reinterpret the spectral dimension of spacetimes as the scaling of an effective self-energy transition amplitude in quantum field theory (QFT), when the system is probed at a given resolution. This picture has four main advantages: (a)…
Newtonian gravity arises as the nonrelativistic, static, weak-field limit of some Lorentzian spacetime geometry solving the generally covariant Einstein equations for a given matter field configuration. Spacetime geometry has a local…
There are not many tools to quantitatively monitor the emergence of classical geometric features from a quantum spacetime, whose microscopic structure may be a highly quantum-fluctuating "spacetime foam". To improve this situation, we…
We discuss a large class of phenomenological models incorporating quantum gravity motivated corrections to electrodynamics. The framework is that of electrodynamics in a birefringent and dispersive medium with non-local constitutive…
We construct stationary flat three-dimensional Lorentzian manifolds with singularities that are obtained from Euclidean surfaces with cone singularities and closed one-forms on these surfaces. In the application to (2+1)-gravity, these…
This paper presents an brief review of some recent work on the causal set approach to quantum gravity. Causal sets are a discretisation of spacetime that allow the symmetries of GR to be preserved in the continuum approximation. One…
Quantum mechanical operators and quantum fields are interpreted as realizations of timespace manifolds. Such causal manifolds are parametrized by the classes of the positive unitary operations in all complex operations, i.e. by the…
This paper is a contribution to the development of a framework, to be used in the context of semiclassical canonical quantum gravity, in which to frame questions about the correspondence between discrete spacetime structures at "quantum…
In quantum geometry, we consider a set of loops, a compact orientable surface and a solid compact spatial region, all inside $\mathbb{R} \times \mathbb{R}^3 \equiv \mathbb{R}^4$, which forms a triple. We want to define an ambient isotopic…
Recently ({\em Class. Quant. Grav.} {\bf 20} 625-664) the concept of {\em causal mapping} between spacetimes --essentially equivalent in this context to the {\em chronological map} one in abstract chronological spaces--, and the related…
When attempting to assess the strengths and weaknesses of various principles in their potential role of guiding the formulation of a theory of quantum gravity, it is crucial to distinguish between principles which are strongly supported by…
In an attempt to re-establish space-time as an essential frame for formulating quantum gravity - rather than an "emergent" one -, we find that exact invariance under scale transformations is an essential new ingredient for such a theory.…
The method of four-dimensional Causal Dynamical Triangulations provides a background-independent definition of the sum over geometries in quantum gravity, in the presence of a positive cosmological constant. We present the evidence…
A number of techniques in Lorentzian geometry, such as those used in the proofs of singularity theorems, depend on certain smooth coverings retaining interesting global geometric properties, including causal ones. In this note we give…
This is an introduction to the by now fifteen years old research field of canonical quantum general relativity, sometimes called "loop quantum gravity". The term "modern" in the title refers to the fact that the quantum theory is based on…
The causal set approach to quantum gravity is based on the hypothesis that the underlying structure of spacetime is that of a random partial order. We survey some of the interesting mathematics that has arisen in connection with the causal…
An important probe of quantum geometry is its spectral dimension, defined via a spatial diffusion process. In this work we study the spectral dimension of a ``spatial hypersurface'' in a manifoldlike causal set using the induced spatial…
When gravity is quantum, the point structure of space-time should be replaced by a non-commutative geometry. This is true even for quantum gravity in the infrared. Using the octonions as space-time coordinates, we construct a pre-spacetime,…
We analyse the classical and quantum geometry of the Barrett-Crane spin foam model for four dimensional quantum gravity, explaining why it has to be considering as a covariant realization of the projector operator onto physical quantum…