Saeed Rastgoo

Small Lorentz violations in quantum gravity: do they lead to unacceptably large effects?

We discuss the applicability of the argument of Collins, Perez, Sudarsky, Urrutia and Vucetich to loop quantum gravity. This argument suggests that Lorentz violations, even ones that only manifest themselves at energies close to the Planck scale, have significant observational consequences at low energies when one considers perturbative quantum field theory and renormalization. We show that non-perturbative treatments like those of loop quantum gravity may generate deviations of Lorentz invariance of a different type than those considered by Collins et al (2004 Phys. Rev. Lett. 93 191301) that do not necessarily imply observational consequences at low energy.

Emergent space-time via a geometric renormalization method

We present a purely geometric renormalization scheme for metric spaces (including uncolored graphs), which consists of a coarse graining and a rescaling operation on such spaces. The coarse graining is based on the concept of quasi-isometry, which yields a sequence of discrete coarse grained spaces each having a continuum limit under the rescaling operation. We provide criteria under which such sequences do converge within a superspace of metric spaces, or may constitute the basin of attraction of a common continuum limit, which hopefully, may represent our space-time continuum. We discuss some of the properties of these coarse grained spaces as well as their continuum limits, such as scale invariance and metric similarity, and show that different layers of spacetime can carry different distance functions while being homeomorphic. Important tools in this analysis are the Gromov-Hausdorff distance functional for general metric spaces and the growth degree of graphs or networks. The whole construction is in the spirit of the Wilsonian renormalization group. Furthermore we introduce a physically relevant notion of dimension on the spaces of interest in our analysis, which e.g. for regular lattices reduces to the ordinary lattice dimension. We show that this dimension is stable under the proposed coarse graining procedure as long as the latter is sufficiently local, i.e. quasi-isometric, and discuss the conditions under which this dimension is an integer. We comment on the possibility that the limit space may turn out to be fractal in case the dimension is non-integer. At the end of the paper we briefly mention the possibility that our network carries a translocal far-order which leads to the concept of wormhole spaces and a scale dependent dimension if the coarse graining procedure is no longer local.

New variables for (1 + 1)-dimensional gravity

We show that the canonical formulation of a generic action for (1 + 1)-dimensional models of gravity coupled to matter admits a description in terms of Ashtekar-type variables. This opens the possibility of discussing models of black hole evaporation using loop representation techniques and verifying which paradigm emerges for the possible elimination of the black hole singularity and the issue of information loss. Although the method can be applied to any (1 + 1)-dimensional action, we implement it concretely in the case of a spherically symmetric reduction of (3 + 1) gravity and the CGHS model.

Callan-Giddings-Harvey-Strominger vacuum in loop quantum gravity and singularity resolution

We study here a complete quantization of a Callan-Giddings-Harvey-Strominger vacuum model following loop quantum gravity techniques. Concretely, we adopt a formulation of the model in terms of a set of new variables that resemble the ones commonly employed in spherically symmetric loop quantum gravity. The classical theory consists of two pairs of canonical variables plus a scalar and diffeomorphism (first class) constraints. We consider a suitable redefinition of the Hamiltonian constraint such that the new constraint algebra (with structure constants) is well adapted to the Dirac quantization approach. For it, we adopt a polymeric representation for both the geometry and the dilaton field. On the one hand, we find a suitable invariant domain of the scalar constraint operator, and we construct explicitly its solution space. There, the eigenvalues of the dilaton and the metric operators cannot vanish locally, allowing us to conclude that singular geometries are ruled out in the quantum theory. On the other hand, the physical Hilbert space is constructed out of them, after group averaging the previous states with the diffeomorphism constraint. In turn, we identify the standard observable corresponding to the mass of the black hole at the boundary, in agreement with the classical theory. We also construct an additional observable on the bulk associated with the square of the dilaton field, with no direct classical analog.

Constraint Lie algebra and local physical Hamiltonian for a generic 2D dilatonic model

We consider a class of two dimensional dilatonic models, and revisit them from the perspective of a new set of “polar type” variables. These are motivated by recently defined variables within the spherically symmetric sector of 4D general relativity. We show that for a large class of dilatonic models, including the case with matter, one can perform a series of canonical transformations in such a way that the Poisson algebra of the constraints becomes a Lie algebra. Furthermore, we construct Dirac observables and a reduced Hamiltonian that accounts for the time evolution of the system. Thus, with our formulation, the systems under consideration are amenable to be quantized with loop quantization methods.

Polymer quantization and the saddle point approximation of partition functions

The saddle point approximation of the path integral partition functions is an important way of deriving the thermodynamical properties of black holes. However, there are certain black hole models and some mathematically analog mechanical models for which this method cannot be applied directly. This is due to the fact that their action evaluated on a classical solution is not finite and its first variation does not vanish for all consistent boundary conditions. These problems can be dealt with by adding a counterterm to the classical action, which is a solution of the corresponding Hamilton-Jacobi equation. In this work we study the effects of polymer quantization on a mechanical model presenting the aforementioned difficulties and contrast it with the above counterterm method. This type of quantization for mechanical models is motivated by the loop quantization of gravity which is known to play a role in the thermodynamics of black hole systems. The model we consider is a nonrelativistic particle in an inverse square potential, and analyze two polarizations of the polymer quantization in which either the position or the momentum is discrete. In the former case, Thiemanns regularization is applied to represent the inverse power potential but we still need to incorporate the Hamilton-Jacobi counterterm which is now modified by polymer corrections. In the latter, momentum discrete case however, such regularization could not be implemented. Yet, remarkably, owing to the fact that the position is bounded, we do not need a Hamilton-Jacobi counterterm in order to have a well-defined saddle point approximation. Further developments and extensions are commented upon in the discussion.

Quantum scalar field in quantum gravity with spherical symmetry

This is a summary of the talk presented by one of us in Loops 2011. We discuss the application of the uniform discretization approach to spherically symmetric gravity coupled to a spherically symmetric scalar field.

Polymerization, the Problem of Access to the Saddle Point Approximation, and Thermodynamics

The saddle point approximation to the partition functions is an important way of deriving the thermodynamical properties of black holes. However, there are certain black hole models and some mathematically analog mechanical models for which this method can not be applied directly. This is due to the fact that their action evaluated on a classical solution is not finite and its first variation does not vanish for all consistent boundary conditions. These problems can be dealt with by adding a counter-term to the classical action, which is a solution of the corresponding Hamilton-Jacobi equation. In this work however, we seek an alternative solution to this problem via the polymer quantization which is motivated by the loop quantum gravity.

Bounds on the Polymer Scale from Gamma Ray Bursts

The polymer representations, which are partially motivated by loop quantum gravity, have been suggested as alternative schemes to quantize the matter fields. Here we apply a version of the polymer representations to the free electromagnetic field, in a reduced phase space setting, and derive the corresponding effective (i.e., semiclassical) Hamiltonian. We study the propagation of an electromagnetic pulse and we confront our theoretical results with gamma ray burst observations. This comparison reveals that the dimensionless polymer scale must be smaller than

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