Related papers: Background Independent Quantum Mechanics and Gravi…
Background independence is often emphasized as an important property of a quantum theory of gravity that takes seriously the geometrical nature of general relativity. In a background-independent formulation, quantum gravity should determine…
The aim of this paper is to explain carefully the arguments behind the assertion that the correct quantum theory of gravity must be background independent. We begin by recounting how the debate over whether quantum gravity must be…
We discuss the meaning of background independence in quantum theories of gravity where geometry and gravity are emergent and illustrate the possibilities using the framework of quantum causal histories.
The history of general relativity suggests that in absence of experimental data, constructing a theory on philosophical first principles can lead to a very useful theory as well as to ground-breaking insights about physical reality. The two…
Loop quantum gravity, a non-perturbative and manifestly background free, quantum theory of gravity implies that at the kinematical level the spatial geometry is discrete in a specific sense. The spirit of background independence also…
One of the many conceptual difficulties in the development of quantum gravity is the role of a background geometry for the structure of quantum field theory. To some extent the problem can be solved by the principle of local covariance. The…
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,…
It is generally believed that a full-fledged theory of quantum gravity should exhibit background independence and diffeomorphism invariance. In its most general form, the latter comprises field redefinitions, which are diffeomorphisms in…
We introduce the notion of background independent quantum field theory. The distinguishing feature of this theory is that the dynamics can be formulated without recourse to a background metric structure. We show in a simple model how the…
Any canonical quantum theory can be understood to arise from the compatibility of the statistical geometry of distinguishable observations with the canonical Poisson structure of Hamiltonian dynamics. This geometric perspective offers a…
The application of quantum theory to gravity is beset with many technical and conceptual problems. After a short tour d'horizon of recent attempts to master those problems by the introduction of new approaches, we show that the aim, a…
The recent formulation of locally covariant quantum field theory may open the way towards a background independent perturbative formulation of Quantum Gravity.
We recapitulate the scheme of emergent gravity to highlight how a background independent quantum gravity can be defined by quantizing spacetime itself.
One of the key ways in which quantum mechanics differs from relativity is that it requires a fixed background reference frame for spacetime. In fact, this appears to be one of the main conceptual obstacles to uniting the two theories.…
We review our recent proposal for a background independent formulation of a holographic theory of quantum gravity. The present review incorporates the necessary background material on geometry of canonical quantum theory, holography and…
We investigate the possibility that a background independent quantum theory of gravity is not a theory of quantum geometry. We provide a way for global spacetime symmetries to emerge from a background independent theory without geometry. In…
Work in progress is described which aims to construct a background independent formulation of M theory by extending results about background independent states and observables from quantum general relativity and supergravity to string…
In a recent paper we have suggested that a formulation of quantum mechanics should exist, which does not require the concept of time, and that the appropriate mathematical language for such a formulation is noncommutative differential…
We review quantum causal histories starting with their interpretations as a quantum field theory on a causal set and a quantum geometry. We discuss the difficulties that background independent theories based on quantum geometry encounter in…
There is a precise sense in which the requirement of background independence suffices to uniquely select the kinematics of loop quantum gravity (LQG). Specifically, the fundamental kinematic algebra of LQG admits a unique diffeomorphism…