This paper corrects an earlier work suggesting that the quantum expectation value of the proper length is bounded from below by the Planck length. The original calculation examined fluctuations of the conformal factor of Einstein-Hilbert gravity. However, in Einstein-Hilbert gravity, the conformal factor is not a dynamical field subject to fluctuations. This paper performs the same calculation using the trace anomaly-induced effective action for the conformal factor and finds that, while conformal fluctuations modify the short-distance behavior of the interval, the interval still approaches zero in the coincidence limit.
In this paper we continue a study of cosmological perturbations in the conformal gravity theory. In previous work we had obtained a restricted set of solutions to the cosmological fluctuation equations, solutions that were required to be both transverse and synchronous. Here we present the general solution. We show that in a conformal invariant gravitational theory fluctuations around any background that is conformal to flat (backgrounds that include the cosmologically interesting Robertson-Walker and de Sitter geometries) can be constructed from the (known) solutions to fluctuations around a …
We study cosmological perturbation theory in the cosmology associated with conformal gravity, establish the validity of the decomposition theorem for it, and then use the theorem to provide an exact solution to the theory in the recombination era. Central to our approach is the use of a fully gauge invariant formulation of the cosmological fluctuations equations. In the recombination era not only is perturbation theory applicable, because of its specific structure in the conformal case the fluctuation equations are found to greatly simplify. Using a master equation for scalar, vector and tenso…
In studying temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background Weinberg has noted that some ease of calculation and insight can be achieved by looking at the structure of the perturbed light cone on which the perturbed photons propagate. In his approach Weinberg worked in a specific gauge and specialized to fluctuations around the standard Robertson-Walker cosmological model with vanishing spatial three-curvature. In this paper we generalize this analysis by providing a gauge invariant treatment in which no choice of gauge is made, and by considering geometries with non-vanishing spat…
The strong constraints of conformal symmetry cause any nearly-conformal sector to blueshift tensor fluctuations in cosmology. Hidden sectors with approximate conformal symmetry, which may be quite large, are a well-motivated extension of physics beyond the Standard Models of particle physics and cosmology. They can therefore lead to a detectable shift in the tensor tilt for next-generation CMB and gravitational wave experiments. We compute the leading-order contribution to the in-in graviton two-point function from virtual loops in such sectors to demonstrate this universal effect. In units wh…
In the studies of quantum field theory in curved spacetime, the ambiguous concept of vacuum state and the particle content is a long-standing debatable aspect. So far it is well known to us that in the background of the curved spacetime, some privileged class of observers detect particle production in the suitably chosen vacuum states of the quantum matter fields. In this work we aim to study the characteristics behaviour of these produced particles in the background of the de-Sitter (dS) Friedmann-Lamaître-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) Universe (both for $(1+1)$ and $(3+1)$ dimensions) and $(1+1)$-…
Semiclassical Physics in gravitational scenario, in its first approximation (1st order) cares only for the expectation value of stress energy tensor and ignores the inherent quantum fluctuations thereof. In the approach of stochastic gravity, on the other hand, these matter fluctuations are supposed to work as the source of geometry fluctuations and have the potential to render the results from 1st order semiclassical physics irrelevant. We study the object of central significance in stochastic gravity, i.e. the noise kernel, for a wide class of Friedmann space-times. Through an equivalence of…
Motivated by recent work suggesting observably large spacetime fluctuations in the causal development of an empty region of flat space, we conjecture that these metric fluctuations can be quantitatively described in terms of a conformal field theory of near-horizon vacuum states. One consequence of this conjecture is that fluctuations in the modular Hamiltonian $ΔK$ of a causal diamond are equal to the entanglement entropy: $\langle ΔK^2 \rangle = \langle K \rangle = \frac{A(Σ_{d-2})}{4 G_d}$, where $A(Σ_{d-2})$ is the area of the entangling surface in $d$ dimensions. Our conjecture applies to…
Quantum fluctuations, conformal deformations, and Gromov's topology --- Wheeler, DeWitt, and Wilson meeting Gromov
光滑流形上黎曼结构的等距类的模空间由J. A. Wheeler在他的量子引力的超空间形式中强调。关于它的一个自然问题是：在这样的模空间上，什么是反映普朗克尺度内几何的最佳量子涨落的自然拓扑？B.DeWitt和其他人已经讨论过这个问题。在这篇文章中，我们介绍了Gromov的$\varepsilon$ -逼近拓扑上的上述模空间的一个封闭的光滑流形。在给读者一些这种拓扑的感觉之后，我们证明了模空间中的每个共形类关于这种拓扑是稠密的。这种现象对量子引力的意义还有待探索。当进一步到一般度量空间时，Gromov基于拓扑的大尺度几何使人想起K.Wilson的重整化群理论。我们讨论了两者的一些特点，并提出了一个问题，两者是否可以合并成一个单一的统一理论。
We suggest a new conceptual frame where inflationary Cosmology is quantum mechanically described using the Hilbert space representation of the crossed product of the type $III$ factor associated with the algebra of local operators on the de Sitter static patch and the automorphism of translations in the emergent conformal time. In this formal framework scalar curvature fluctuations are determined by the gravitational potential induced by the quantum variance of the generator of the conformal time automorphisms. Choosing as representative, in the Hilbert space of the crossed product, the effect…
The existence of a minimum length in quantum gravity is investigated by computing the in-in expectation value of the proper distance in the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism. No minimum geometrical length is found for arbitrary gravitational theories to all orders in perturbation theory. Using non-perturbative techniques, we also show that neither the conformal sector of general relativity nor higher-derivative gravity features a minimum length. A minimum length scale, on the other hand, seems to always be present when one considers in-out amplitudes, from which one could extract the energy scale of…
We describe a correspondence between domain wall solutions of Einstein gravity with a single scalar field and self-interaction potential. The correspondence we call 'conformal scale factor inversion (CSFI)' is a map comprising the inversion of the scale factor in conformal coordinates, and a transformation of the field and its potential which preserves the form of the Einstein equations for static and isotropic domain walls. By construction, CSFI maps the asymptotic AdS boundary to the vicinity of a naked singularity in a theory with a special Liouville (exponential) scalar field potential; it…
The accretion of test fluids flowing onto a black hole is investigated. Particularly, by adopting a dynamical Hamiltonian approach, we are capable to find the critical points for various cases of black hole in conformal gravity. In these cases, we have analyzed the general solutions of accretion employing the isothermal equations of state. The steady state and spherically symmetric accretion of different test fluids onto the conformal gravity black hole has been considered. Further, we have classified these flows in the context of equations of state and the cases of conformal gravity black hol…
A central aspect of the cosmological constant problem is to understand why vacuum energy does not gravitate. In order to account for this observation, while allowing for nontrivial dynamics of the quantum vacuum, we motivate a novel background independent theory of gravity. The theory is an extension of unimodular gravity that is described in geometric terms by means of a conformal (light-cone) structure and differential forms of degree one and two. We show that the subset of the classical field equations describing the dynamics of matter degrees of freedom and the conformal structure of space…
