English

Towards a novel approach to semi-classical gravity

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2019-02-07 v1

Abstract

Semi-classical gravity is an approximation to quantum gravity where gravity is treated classically and matter quantum mechanically. Matter is described by quantum field theory on curved space-time, whereas gravity is described by a space-time metric which satisfies Einstein's field equations. In the usual approach to semi-classical gravity, the matter source term in Einstein's field equations is given by the expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor operator. In this paper, we suggest an alternative approach based on Bohmian mechanics. In Bohmian mechanics, a quantum system is described by an actual configuration (e.g., an actual scalar field), which evolves under the influence of the wave function. The idea is to consider the actual energy-momentum tensor corresponding to this configuration as the matter source term in Einstein's field equations. This approach is expected to improve upon the usual approach.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1902.02188,
  title  = {Towards a novel approach to semi-classical gravity},
  author = {Ward Struyve},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1902.02188},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

19, no figures. arXiv admin note: significant overlap with arXiv:1507.04771

R2 v1 2026-06-23T07:33:36.568Z