Related papers: Gravitational vacuum polarization
We review our recent theoretical results about inequivalence between passive gravitational mass and energy for a composite quantum body at a macroscopic level. In particular, we consider macroscopic ensembles of the simplest composite…
Gravitational field is usually neglected in calculation of atomic energy levels as its effect is much weaker than the electromagnetic field, but that is not the case for a particle orbiting a black hole. In this work, canonical quantization…
We show that the canonical formulation of the semiclassical Einstein equation, where the matter terms in the constraints are replaced by expectation values of the corresponding operators in quantum states, is inconsistent due to the…
The interaction between gravitational and electromagnetic waves in the presence of a static magnetic field is studied. The field strength of the static field is allowed to surpass the Schwinger critical field, such that the quantum…
Within loop quantum gravity we construct a coarse-grained approximation for the Einstein-Maxwell theory that yields effective Maxwell equations in flat spacetime comprising Planck scale corrections. The corresponding Hamiltonian is defined…
No experimental evidence exists, to date, whether or not the gravitational field must be quantised. Theoretical arguments in favour of quantisation are inconclusive. The most straightforward alternative to quantum gravity, a coupling…
It is commonly anticipated that gravity is subject to the standard principles of quantum mechanics. Yet some (including Einstein) have questioned that presumption, whose empirical basis is weak. Indeed, recently Freeman Dyson has emphasized…
Building on a pair of earlier papers, I investigate the various point-wise and averaged energy conditions for the quantum stress-energy tensor corresponding to a conformally-coupled massless scalar field in the in the (1+1)-dimensional…
In the semiclassical quantum gravity derived from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, the energy density of a matter field loses quantum coherence due to the induced gauge potential from the parametric interaction with gravity in a non-static…
In a previous paper, the authors with Ann Nelson proposed that the UV and IR applicability of effective quantum field theories should be constrained by requiring that strong gravitational effects are nowhere encountered in a theory's domain…
The examination of parity symmetry in gravitational interactions has drawn increasing attention. Although Einstein's General Relativity is parity-conserved, numerous theories of parity-violating (PV) gravity in different frameworks have…
I outline motivations for believing that important quantum gravity effects lie beyond the Planck scale at both higher energies and longer distances and times. These motivations arise in part from the study of ultra-high energy scattering,…
We consider here the possibility of quantum gravity induced violation of Lorentz symmetry (LV). Even if suppressed by the inverse Planck mass such LV can be tested by current experiments and astrophysical observations. We review the…
The claim that at the so-called Planck scale our current physics breaks down and a new theory of quantum gravity is required is ubiquitous, but the evidence is shakier than the confidence of those assertions warrants. In this paper, I…
The semiclassical gravity describes gravitational back-reactions of the classical spacetime interacting with quantum matter fields but the quantum effects on the background is formally defined as higher derivative curvatures. These induce…
We review well known classical energy conditions and their implications for gravitational solutions, including the celebrated Hawking and Penrose singularity theorems. We then consider quantum fields coupled to gravity, where the topic…
We start from classical general relativity coupled to matter fields. Each configuration variable and its conjugate momentum, as also space-time points, are raised to the status of matrices [equivalently operators]. These matrices obey a…
The angular dependence of the differential cross section of unpolarized light-by-light scattering summed over final polarizations is the same in any low-energy effective theory of quantum electrodynamics and also in Born-Infeld…
Due to quantum gravity fluctuations at the Planck scale, the space-time manifold is no longer continuous, but discretized. As a result the Lorentz symmetry is broken at very high energies. In this article, we study the neutrino oscillation…
Black holes are an apparently unavoidable prediction of classical General Relativity, at least if matter obeys the strong energy condition rho + 3p > 0. However quantum vacuum fluctuations generally violate this condition, as does the eq.…