Search results for "Spacetime"
showing 10 items of 159 documents
Cosmological Horizon Modes and Linear Response in de Sitter Spacetime
2009
Linearized fluctuations of quantized matter fields and the spacetime geometry around de Sitter space are considered in the case that the matter fields are conformally invariant. Taking the unperturbed state of the matter to be the de Sitter invariant Bunch-Davies state, the linear variation of the stress tensor about its self-consistent mean value serves as a source for fluctuations in the geometry through the semiclassical Einstein equations. This linear response framework is used to investigate both the importance of quantum backreaction and the validity of the semiclassical approximation in cosmology. The full variation of the stress tensor delta bi contains two kinds of terms: (1) those…
Electric-magnetic duality and renormalization in curved spacetimes
2014
We point out that the duality symmetry of free electromagnetism does not hold in the quantum theory if an arbitrary classical gravitational background is present. The symmetry breaks in the process of renormalization, as also happens with conformal invariance. We show that a similar duality-anomaly appears for a massless scalar field in $1+1$ dimensions.
Late-time correlations in semiclassical particle-black hole scattering
2002
We analyse the quantum corrected geometry and radiation in the scattering of extremal black holes by low-energy neutral matter. We point out the fact that the correlators of local observables inside the horizon are the same as those of the vacuum. Outside the horizon the correlators at late times are much bigger than those of the (thermal) case obtained neglecting the backreaction. This suggests that the corrected Hawking radiation could be compatible with unitarity.
Scale-dependent metric and causal structures in Quantum Einstein Gravity
2006
Within the asymptotic safety scenario for gravity various conceptual issues related to the scale dependence of the metric are analyzed. The running effective field equations implied by the effective average action of Quantum Einstein Gravity (QEG) and the resulting families of resolution dependent metrics are discussed. The status of scale dependent vs. scale independent diffeomorphisms is clarified, and the difference between isometries implemented by scale dependent and independent Killing vectors is explained. A concept of scale dependent causality is proposed and illustrated by various simple examples. The possibility of assigning an "intrinsic length" to objects in a QEG spacetime is a…
Twistor transform inddimensions and a unifying role for twistors
2005
Twistors in four dimensions d=4 have provided a convenient description of massless particles with any spin, and this led to remarkable computational techniques in Yang-Mills field theory. Recently it was shown that the same d=4 twistor provides also a unified description of an assortment of other particle dynamical systems, including special examples of massless or massive particles, relativistic or non-relativistic, interacting or non-interacting, in flat space or curved spaces. In this paper, using 2T-physics as the primary theory, we derive the general twistor transform in d-dimensions that applies to all cases, and show that these more general twistor transforms provide d dimensional ho…
Renormalization group improved gravitational actions: A Brans-Dicke approach
2003
A new framework for exploiting information about the renormalization group (RG) behavior of gravity in a dynamical context is discussed. The Einstein-Hilbert action is RG-improved by replacing Newton's constant and the cosmological constant by scalar functions in the corresponding Lagrangian density. The position dependence of $G$ and $\Lambda$ is governed by a RG equation together with an appropriate identification of RG scales with points in spacetime. The dynamics of the fields $G$ and $\Lambda$ does not admit a Lagrangian description in general. Within the Lagrangian formalism for the gravitational field they have the status of externally prescribed ``background'' fields. The metric sat…
Fractal Spacetime Structure in Asymptotically Safe Gravity
2005
Four-dimensional Quantum Einstein Gravity (QEG) is likely to be an asymptotically safe theory which is applicable at arbitrarily small distance scales. On sub-Planckian distances it predicts that spacetime is a fractal with an effective dimensionality of 2. The original argument leading to this result was based upon the anomalous dimension of Newton's constant. In the present paper we demonstrate that also the spectral dimension equals 2 microscopically, while it is equal to 4 on macroscopic scales. This result is an exact consequence of asymptotic safety and does not rely on any truncation. Contact is made with recent Monte Carlo simulations.
Quantum nonlocality in extended theories of gravity
2020
We investigate how pure-state Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlations in the internal degrees of freedom of massive particles are affected by a curved spacetime background described by extended theories of gravity. We consider models for which the corrections to the Einstein-Hilbert action are quadratic in the curvature invariants and we focus on the weak-field limit. We quantify nonlocal quantum correlations by means of the violation of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality, and show how a curved background suppresses the violation by a leading term due to general relativity and a further contribution due to the corrections to Einstein gravity. Our results can be generalized to massless p…
The geometry of branes and extended superspaces
1999
We argue that a description of supersymmetric extended objects from a unified geometric point of view requires an enlargement of superspace. To this aim we study in a systematic way how superspace groups and algebras arise from Grassmann spinors when these are assumed to be the only primary entities. In the process, we recover generalized spacetime superalgebras and extensions of supersymmetry found earlier. The enlargement of ordinary superspace with new parameters gives rise to extended superspace groups, on which manifestly supersymmetric actions may be constructed for various types of p-branes, including D-branes (given by Chevalley-Eilenberg cocycles) with their Born-Infeld fields. Thi…
SPECTRAL GEOMETRY OF SPACETIME
2000
Spacetime, understood as a globally hyperbolic manifold, may be characterized by spectral data using a 3+1 splitting into space and time, a description of space by spectral triples and by employing causal relationships, as proposed earlier. Here, it is proposed to use the Hadamard condition of quantum field theory as a smoothness principle.