Search results for "Quantum gravity"
showing 10 items of 126 documents
The Ising transition in 2D simplicial quantum gravity - can Regge calculus be right?
1995
We report a high statistics simulation of Ising spins coupled to 2D quantum gravity in the Regge calculus approach using triangulated tori with up to $512^2$ vertices. For the constant area ensemble and the $dl/l$ functional measure we definitively can exclude the critical exponents of the Ising phase transition as predicted for dynamically triangulated surfaces. We rather find clear evidence that the critical exponents agree with the Onsager values for static regular lattices, independent of the coupling strength of an $R^2$ interaction term. For exploratory simulations using the lattice version of the Misner measure the situation is less clear.
Duality-invariant Einstein-Planck relation and the speed of light at very short wavelengths
2011
We propose a generalized Einstein-Planck relation for photons which is invariant under the change $\ensuremath{\lambda}/a{l}_{P}$ to $a{l}_{P}/\ensuremath{\lambda}$, $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ being the photon wavelength, ${l}_{P}$ Planck's length, and $a$ a numerical constant. This yields a wavelength-dependent speed of light $v(\ensuremath{\lambda})=c/(1+{a}^{2}({l}_{P}/\ensuremath{\lambda}{)}^{2})$, with $c$ the usual speed of light in vacuo, indicating that the speed of light should decrease for sufficiently short wavelengths. We discuss the conceptual differences with the previous proposals related to a possible decrease of the speed of light for very short wavelengths based on quantum flu…
Vacuum polarization around stars: Nonlocal approximation
2004
We compute the vacuum polarization associated with quantum massless fields around stars with spherical symmetry. The nonlocal contribution to the vacuum polarization is dominant in the weak field limit, and induces quantum corrections to the exterior metric that depend on the inner structure of the star. It also violates the null energy conditions. We argue that similar results also hold in the low energy limit of quantum gravity. Previous calculations of the vacuum polarization in spherically symmetric spacetimes, based on local approximations, are not adequate for newtonian stars.
Quantum bubble dynamics in the presence of gravity
1991
Abstract The dynamics of spherical quantum bubbles in 3+1 dimensions is governed by a Klein-Gordon-type equation which simulates the quantum mechanical motion of a relativistic point particle in 1+1 dimensions. This dimensional reduction is especially clear in the minisuperspace formulation first used in quantum cosmology and adapted here to quantum bubble dynamics. The payoff of this formulation is the discovery of the gravitational analogue of the Klein effect, namely the crossing of positive and negative energy levels of the particle spectrum induced by an external gravitational field. This phenomenon gives rise to a finite probability that a vacuum bubble might tunnel from an initial bo…
Quantum decoherence and neutrino data
2006
In this work we perform global fits of microscopic decoherence models of neutrinos to all available current data, including LSND and KamLAND spectral distortion results. In previous works on related issues the models used were supposed to explain LSND results by means of quantum gravity induced decoherence. However those models were purely phenomenological without any underlying microscopic basis. It is one of the main purposes of this article to use detailed microscopic decoherence models with complete positivity, to fit the data.The decoherence in these models has contributions not only from stochastic quantum gravity vacua operating as a medium, but also from conventional uncertainties i…
Insensitivity of Hawking radiation to an invariant Planck-scale cutoff
2009
A disturbing aspect of Hawking's derivation of black hole radiance is the need to invoke extreme conditions for the quantum field that originates the emitted quanta. It is widely argued that the derivation requires the validity of the conventional relativistic field theory to arbitrarily high, trans-Planckian scales. We stress in this note that this is not necessarily the case if the question is presented in a covariant way. We point out that Hawking radiation is immediately robust against an invariant Planck-scale cutoff. This important feature of Hawking radiation is relevant for a quantum gravity theory that preserves, in some way, the Lorentz symmetry.
Fixed versus random triangulations in 2D Regge calculus
1997
Abstract We study 2D quantum gravity on spherical topologies using the Regge calculus approach with the dl l measure. Instead of a fixed non-regular triangulation which has been used before, we study for each system size four different random triangulations, which are obtained according to the standard Voronoi-Delaunay procedure. We compare both approaches quantitatively and show that the difference in the expectation value of R2 between the fixed and the random triangulation depends on the lattice size and the surface area A. We also try again to measure the string susceptibility exponents through a finite-size scaling Ansatz in the expectation value of an added R2 interaction term in an a…
Z2-Regge versus standard Regge calculus in two dimensions
1999
We consider two versions of quantum Regge calculus: the standard Regge calculus where the quadratic link lengths of the simplicial manifold vary continuously and the ${Z}_{2}$ Regge model where they are restricted to two possible values. The goal is to determine whether the computationally more easily accessible ${Z}_{2}$ model still retains the universal characteristics of standard Regge theory in two dimensions. In order to compare observables such as the average curvature or Liouville field susceptibility, we use in both models the same functional integration measure, which is chosen to render the ${Z}_{2}$ Regge model particularly simple. Expectation values are computed numerically and …
A field theoretic realization of a universal bundle for gravity
1992
Abstract Based upon a local vector supersymmetry algebra, we discuss the general structure of the quantum action for topological gravity theories in arbitrary dimensions. The precise form of the action depends on the particular dimension, and also on the moduli space of interest. We describe the general features by examining a theory of topological gravity in two dimensions, with a moduli space specified by vanishing curvature two-form. It is shown that these topological gravity models together with their observables provide a field theoretic realization of a universal bundle for gravity.
The 2 + 1 Kepler problem and its quantization
2001
We study a system of two pointlike particles coupled to three dimensional Einstein gravity. The reduced phase space can be considered as a deformed version of the phase space of two special-relativistic point particles in the centre of mass frame. When the system is quantized, we find some possibly general effects of quantum gravity, such as a minimal distances and a foaminess of the spacetime at the order of the Planck length. We also obtain a quantization of geometry, which restricts the possible asymptotic geometries of the universe.