Related papers: Engineering the Quantum Foam
We study the dynamic properties of a thermal autonomous machine made up of two quantum Brownian particles, each of which is in contact with an environment at different temperature and moves on a periodic sinusoidal track. When such tracks…
Spin foam models are a new approach to a formulation of quantum gravity which is fully background independent, non-perturbative, and covariant, in the spirit of path integral formulations of quantum field theory. In this thesis we describe…
The nature of the cosmological constant is a mystery. We don't understand its quantum origin but we associate it with the actual acceleration of the universe because it is the simplest description we had until recently of the present…
We show how quantum mechanics can be understood as a space-time theory provided that its spatial continuum is modelled by a variable real number (qrumber) continuum. Such a continuum can be constructed using only standard Hilbert space…
While observational cosmology has recently progressed fast, it revealed a serious dilemma called dark energy: an unknown source of exotic energy with negative pressure driving a current accelerating phase of the universe. All attempts so…
Quantum friction, the electromagnetic fluctuation-induced frictional force decelerating an atom which moves past a macroscopic dielectric body, has so far eluded experimental evidence despite more than three decades of theoretical studies.…
We use two simple independent gedankan experiments to show that the holographic principle can be understood intuitively as having its origin in the quantum fluctuations of spacetime. Applied to cosmology, this consideration leads to a…
Quantum gravity, as a fundamental theory of space-time, is expected to reveal how the universe may have started, perhaps during or before an inflationary epoch. It may then leave a potentially observable (but probably minuscule) trace in…
The expectation value of the stress-energy tensor of a free conformally invariant scalar field is computed in a two-dimensional reduction of the Alcubierre ``warp drive'' spacetime. The stress-energy is found to diverge if the apparent…
The problem of finding the quantum theory of the gravitational field, and thus understanding what is quantum spacetime, is still open. One of the most active of the current approaches is loop quantum gravity. Loop quantum gravity is a…
Interactions with ordinary matter of a flux of high-speed uncharged dark matter particles pervasively present in space are examined. In this model, we find that the property of matter that we designate as mass becomes a measure of the…
A number of recent proposals for a quantum theory of gravity are based on the idea that spacetime geometry and gravity are derivative concepts and only apply at an approximate level. There are two fundamental challenges to any such…
Considering the Barrett-Crane spin foam model for quantum gravity with (positive) cosmological constant, we show that speeds must be quantized and we investigate the physical implications of this effect such as the emergence of an effective…
A number of approaches to four-dimensional quantum gravity, such as loop quantum gravity and holography, situate areas as their fundamental variables. However, this choice of kinematics can easily lead to gravitational dynamics peaked on…
Einstein's special theory of relativity starts with assumptions about how observations conducted in relatively moving inertial frames must compare. From these assumptions, conclusions can be drawn regarding the laws of physics in any one…
Quantum Space Time may be characterized by a plethora of novel phenomena, such as Lorentz violations and non-trivial refractive indices, stochastic metric fluctuation effects leading to decoherence of quantum matter and non-commutativity of…
This thesis focuses on late-time cosmic acceleration within modified theories of gravity, using various observational data sets and statistical analysis. The Universe is assumed to be spatially homogeneous and isotropic and is described by…
It can be shown that negative energy requirements within the Alcubierre spacetime can be greatly reduced when one introduces a lapse function into the Einstein tensor. Thereby reducing the negative energy requirements of the warp drive…
The early Dirac proposal to model the electron as a charged membrane is reviewed. A rigidity term, instead of the natural membrane tension, involving linearly the extrinsic curvature of the worldvolume swept out by the membrane is…
Much of the twentieth century physics has considered rigid laws-- even Quantum Mechanics and Statistical Mechanics were based on such laws. These laws operated in a smooth spacetime manifold. However more recent approaches as in Quantum…