Related papers: Constraints on Covariance
General relativity is a covariant theory of two transverse, traceless graviton degrees of freedom. According to a theorem of Hojman, Kuchar, and Teitelboim, modifications of general relativity must either introduce new degrees of freedom or…
Classically general covariance is found from the idea that a vector is a physical quantity which exists independently of choice of coordinate system and is unchanged by a change of coordinate system. It is often assumed that there exists…
Lorentz covariance is the fundamental principle of every relativistic field theory which insures consistent physical descriptions. Even if the space-time is noncommutative, field theories on it should keep Lorentz covariance. In this…
In its canonical formulation, general relativity is subject to gauge transformations that are equivalent to space-time coordinate changes of general covariance only when the gauge generators, given by the Hamiltonian and diffeomorphism…
The impossibility of an indeterministic evolution for standard relativistic quantum field theories, that is, theories in which all fields satisfy the condition that the generators of spacetime translation have spectrum in the forward…
A scalar field theory is constructed on an energy-momentum background of constant curvature. The generalization of the usual Feynamn rules for the flat geometry follows from the requirement of their covariance. The main result is that the…
It is widely accepted that the fundamental geometrical law of nature should follow from an action principle. The particular subset of transformations of a system's dynamical variables that maintain the form of the action principle comprises…
The different roles and natures of spacetime appearing in a quantum field theory and in classical physics are analyzed implying that a quantum theory of gravitation is not necessarily a quantum theory of curved spacetime. Developing an…
General covariance is a crucial notion in the study of field theories in curved spacetime. A field theory defined with respect to a semi-Riemannian metric is generally covariant if two metrics which are related by a diffeomorphism produce…
In this paper, we study implications of the geometrical nature of space- time for some of the basic tenets of quantum mechanics. That is, we study two different implications of the principle of general covariance; first we quantize a…
Traditional derivations of general relativity from the graviton degrees of freedom assume space-time Lorentz covariance as an axiom. In this essay, we survey recent evidence that general relativity is the unique spatially-covariant…
Relativistic invariance of the vacuum is (or follows from) one of the Wightman axioms which is commonly believed to be true. Without these axioms, here we present a direct and general proof of continuous relativistic invariance of all…
Diffeomorphism invariance is a feature that gets sometimes highlighted as something with profound implications in the physics of spacetime. Moreover, it is often wrongly associated exclusively with General Relativity. The fact that…
The Lagrangians and Hamiltonians of classical field theory require to comprise gauge fields in order to be form-invariant under local gauge transformations. These gauge fields have turned out to correctly describe pertaining elementary…
We present a self-contained introduction to the classical theory of spacetime and fields. This exposition is based on the most general principles: the principle of general covariance (relativity) and the principle of least action. The order…
We study a tentative generally covariant quantum field theory, denoted the T-Theory, as a tool to investigate the consistency of quantum general relativity. The theory describes the gravitational field and a minimally coupled scalar field;…
Diffeomorphism invariance is often considered to be a hallmark of the theory of general relativity (GR). But closer analysis reveals that this cannot be what makes GR distinctive. The concept of diffeomorphism invariance can be defined in…
A theory has been presented previously in which the geometrical structure of a real four-dimensional space time manifold is expressed by a real orthonormal tetrad, and the group of diffeomorphisms is replaced by a larger group. The group…
The requirement of general covariance of quantum field theory (QFT) naturally leads to quantization based on the manifestly covariant De Donder-Weyl formalism. To recover the standard noncovariant formalism without violating covariance,…
The need for a time-shift invariant formulation of quantum theory arises from fundamental symmetry principles as well as heuristic cosmological considerations. Such a description then leaves open the question of how to reconcile global…