Related papers: Falsifiable predictions from semiclassical quantum…
The local Lorentz and diffeomorphism symmetries of Einstein's gravitational theory are spontaneously broken by a Higgs mechanism by invoking a phase transition in the early Universe, at a critical temperature $T_c$ below which the symmetry…
We explain how quantum gravity can be defined by quantizing spacetime itself. A pinpoint is that the gravitational constant G = L_P^2 whose physical dimension is of (length)^2 in natural unit introduces a symplectic structure of spacetime…
We explore how the stability of metric perturbations in higher derivative theories of gravity depends on the energy scale of initial seeds of such perturbations and on a typical energy scale of the gravitational vacuum background. It is…
Quantum-gravity effects are expected to be suppressed by the Planck mass. For experimental progress it is therefore important to identify potential signatures from Planck-scale physics that are amenable to ultrahigh-precision tests. It is…
The Karolyhazy uncertainty relation is the statement that if a device is used to measure a length $l$, there will be a minimum uncertainty $\delta l$ in the measurement, given by $(\delta l)^3 \sim L_P^2\; l$. This is a consequence of…
In the past decade the phenomenology of quantum gravity has been dominated by the search of violations of Lorentz invariance. However, there are very serious arguments that led us to assume that this invariance is a symmetry in Nature. This…
Standard approaches to quantum gravity start with a pre-spacetime structure and attempt, in accordance with Bohr's correspondence principle, to recover the pseudo-Riemannian manifold in the low energy limit. These approaches assume there is…
Much attention has been recently devoted to the possibility that quantum gravity effects could lead to departures from Special Relativity in the form of a deformed Poincar\`e algebra. These proposals go generically under the name of Doubly…
It is argued that holographic bounds on the information content of spacetime might be directly measurable. A new uncertainty principle is conjectured to arise from quantum indeterminacy of nearly flat spacetime: Angular orientations of null…
Special relativity has been tested at low energy with great accuracy, but these results cannot be extrapolated to very high-energy phenomena: this new domain of physics may actually provide the key to the, yet unsettled, question of the…
We consider a model of Quantum Gravity phenomenology, based on the idea that space-time may have some unknown granular structure that respects the Lorentz symmetry. The proposal involves non-trivial couplings of curvature to matter fields…
A satisfactory theory of quantum gravity may necessitate a drastic modification of our perception of space-time, by giving it a foamy structure at distances comparable to the Planck length. It is argued in this essay that the experimental…
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…
Small violations of spacetime symmetries have recently been identified as promising Planck-scale signals. This talk reviews how such violations can arise in various approaches to quantum gravity, how the emergent low-energy effects can be…
We show that an analog of the physics at the Planck scale can be found in the propagation of tightly focused laser beams. Various equations that occur in generalized quantum mechanics are formally identical to those describing the nonlinear…
Quantum gravitational effects become significant at a cut-off species scale that can be much lower than the Planck scale whenever we get a parametrically large number of fields becoming light. This is expected to occur at any perturbative…
Familiar concepts in physics, such as Lorentz symmetry, are expected to be broken at energies approaching the Planck energy scale as predicted by several quantum-gravity theories. However, such very large energies are unreachable by current…
Realizing dark energy and the observed de Sitter spacetime in quantum gravity has proven to be obstructed in most every usual approach. We argue that additional degrees of freedom of the left- and right-movers in string theory and a…
The acceleration of the universe can be explained either through dark energy or through the modification of gravity on large scales. In this paper we investigate modified gravity models and compare their observable predictions with dark…
The ``reliability horizon'' for semi-classical quantum gravity quantifies the extent to which we should trust semi-classical quantum gravity, and gives a handle on just where the ``Planck regime'' resides. The key obstruction to pushing…