The turn of the millennium was a time of optimism about an approach to noncommutative geometry inspired by rich mathematical objects called `quantum groups' and its applications to quantum spacetime. This would model quantum gravity effects as noncommutativity of spacetime coordinates and was arguably going to solve quantum gravity itself. It took a further 20 years from that point to develop a particularly suitable formalism of `quantum Riemannian geometry', but this was largely done and has begun to be used to construct baby quantum gravity models. In this article, we obtain new results for state of the art fuzzy sphere and n-gon models in this approach. We also review what are some elements of quantum gravity that we can already see and what are the critical conceptual and mathematical elements that are still missing to more fully achieve this goal.
Out of several possible extensions of general relativity, the scalar-tensor theory is the most popular for several reasons. Since the quantum description of gravity is yet to be formulated properly, the understanding of a gravitational theory remains incomplete until the study of thermodynamic and fluid-gravity aspects, which provides an alternative viewpoint to understand the gravitational theory. In this review, we study these features (thermodynamics and the fluid gravity analogy) in a rigorous and yet in a concise manner for the scalar-tensor gravity, which has been revealed in our recent …
Quantization of the gravity remains one of the most important, yet extremely illusive, challenges at the heart of modern physics. Any attempt to resolve this long-standing problem seems to be doomed, as the route to any direct empirical evidence (i.e., detecting gravitons) for shedding light on the quantum aspect of the gravity is far beyond the current capabilities. Recently, it has been discovered that gravitationally-induced entanglement, tailored in the interferometric frameworks, can be used to witness the quantum nature of the gravity. Even though these schemes offer promising tools for …
The current acceleration of the Universe is one of the most puzzling issues in theoretical physics nowadays. We are far from giving an answer on this letter to its true nature. Yet, with the observations we have at hand, we analyse the different patterns that the gravitational potential can show in the future. Surprisingly, gravity not only can get weaker in the near future, it can even become repulsive; or equivalently, the gravitational potential may become negative. We show this remark by using one of the simplest phenomenological model we can imagine for dark energy. We have as well review…
We explore the fate of the curvature singularity of Schwarzschild (deSitter) black holes in asymptotically safe quantum gravity. Specifically, we upgrade the classical spacetime by including the running of the Newton coupling and cosmological constant. In this setting, the antiscreening character of the gravitational interaction can remove the singularity, yet a nonzero value of the cosmological constant in the ultraviolet appears to reintroduce it. We find hints that a finite value of the cosmological constant in the infrared is compatible with singularity resolution provided that the cosmolo…
The problem of time is one of the most relevant open issues in canonical quantum gravity. Although there is a huge literature about this topic, a commonly accepted solution has not been found yet. Here, we focus on the semiclassical approach to the problem of time, that has the main goal of reproducing quantum field theory on a fixed WKB background accounting also for quantum gravity corrections. We analyze the different choices of the expansion parameter and discuss the problems arising in previous proposals, where a non-unitary evolution emerges as an effect of quantum gravity corrections. I…
A large number of particle species allows to formulate quantum gravity in a special double-scaling limit, the species limit. In this regime, quantum gravitational amplitudes simplify substantially. An infinite set of perturbative corrections, that usually blur the picture, vanishes, whereas the collective and non-perturbative effects can be cleanly extracted. Such are the effects that control physics of black holes and of de Sitter and their entanglement curves. In string theory example, we show that the entropy of open strings matches the Gibbons-Hawking entropy of a would-be de Sitter state …
In quantum gravity it is generally thought that a modified commutator of the form $[{\hat x}, {\hat p}] = i \hbar (1 + βp^2)$ is sufficient to give rise to a minimum length scale. We test this assumption and find that different pairs of modified operators can lead to the same modified commutator and yet give different or even no minimal length. The conclusion is that the modification of the operators is the main factor in determining whether there is a minimal length. This fact - that it is the specific form of the modified operators which determine the existence or not of a minimal length sca…
The holographic principle posits that all quantum information in a region of spacetime is encoded on its boundary. While there is strong evidence for this principle in certain models of quantum gravity in asymptotically anti-de Sitter spacetime, it is yet to be established whether holography is a generic feature of quantum gravity, or a peculiar property of these models. The goal of the present work is to present a model of holographic reconstruction in the framework of perturbative quantum gravity in flat spacetime. Specifically, we consider a state in the single-particle sector of a quantum …
In a quantum gravity theory, spacetime at mesoscopic scales can acquire a novel structure very different from the classical concept of general relativity. A way to effectively characterize the quantum nature of spacetime is through a momentum dependent space-time metric. There is a vast literature showing that this geometry is related to deformed relativistic kinematics, which is precisely a way to capture residual effects of a quantum gravity theory. In this work, we study the notion of surface gravity in a momentum dependent Schwarzschild black hole geometry. We show that using the two main …
We review experiments and theoretical models about the possible mutual interplay between the gravitational field and materials in the superconducting state or other macroscopic quantum states. More generally, we focus on the possibility for quantum macrosystems in a coherent state to produce local alterations of the gravitational field in which they are immersed. This fully interdisciplinary research field has witnessed a conspicuous progress in the last decades, with hundreds of published papers, and yet several questions are still completely open.
It is well known that a theory with explicit Lorentz violation is not invariant under diffeomorphisms. On the other hand, for geometrical theories of gravity, there are alternative transformations, which can be best defined within the first-order formalism, and that can be regarded as a set of improved diffeomorphisms. These symmetries are known as local translations and, among other features, they are Lorentz covariant off shell. It is thus interesting to study if theories with explicit Lorentz violation are invariant under local translations. In this work, an example of such a theory, known …
Making the Lorentzian path integral for quantum gravity well-defined and computable has been a long standing challenge. In this work we adopt the recently proposed effective spin foam models to the Lorentzian case. This defines a path integral over discrete Lorentzian quantum geometric configurations, which include metric and torsion degrees of freedom. The torsion degrees of freedom arise due to an anomaly, which is parametrized by the Barbero--Immirzi parameter. Requiring a semi-classical regime constrains this parameter, but the precise bound has to be determined by probing the dynamics. Th…
We investigate axion-like particles (ALPs) in the context of asymptotically safe gravity-matter systems. The ALP-photon interaction, which facilitates experimental searches for ALPs, is a dimension-5-operator. Quantum fluctuations of gravity lower its scaling dimension, and the ALP-photon coupling can become asymptotically free or even asymptotically safe. However, quantum fluctuations of gravity need to be strong to overcome the canonical scaling and this strong-gravity regime is in tension with the weak-gravity bound in asymptotic safety. Thus, we tentatively conclude that fundamental ALPs c…
We introduce a protocol for a quantum switch in the gravitational field of a spherical mass and determine the time interval required for its realization in the gravity of Earth. One of the agents that perform operations with indefinite order is a quantum system in a path superposition state. Entanglement between its proper time and position is explored as a resource for the implementation of the quantum switch. The realization of the proposed protocol would probe the physical regime described by quantum mechanics on curved spacetimes, which has not yet been explored experimentally.
We present a short, general and accessible introduction to quantizing gravity in the Heisenberg picture. We then apply this formalism to the scenario where two spatially superposed masses interact through the gravitational field. We discuss some of the consequences for quantum gravity including the spin of the graviton, the notions of locality and causality, as well as going beyond the linear regime. We use the Schwinger action principle and the Heisenberg representation which we believe make the issues involved clearer. We conclude by commenting on a number of traditionally discussed apparent…
We present the BRST formalism of a Weyl conformal gravity in Weyl geometry. Choosing the extended de Donder gauge-fixing condition (or harmonic gauge condition) for the general coordinate invariance and the new scalar gauge-fixing for the Weyl invariance we find that there is a Poincar${\rm{\acute{e}}}$-like $\IOSp(10|10)$ supersymmetry as in a Weyl invariant scalar-tensor gravity in Riemann geometry. We also point out that there is a gravitational conformal symmetry in quantum gravity although there is a massive Weyl gauge field as a result of spontaneous symmetry breakdown of Weyl gauge symm…
Understanding gravity in the framework of quantum mechanics is one of the great challenges in modern physics. Along this line, a prime question is to find whether gravity is a quantum entity subject to the rules of quantum mechanics. It is fair to say that there are no feasible ideas yet to test the quantum coherent behaviour of gravity directly in a laboratory experiment. Here, we introduce an idea for such a test based on the principle that two objects cannot be entangled without a quantum mediator. We show that despite the weakness of gravity, the phase evolution induced by the gravitationa…
All global symmetries are expected to be explicitly broken by quantum gravitational effects, and yet may play an important role in Particle Physics and Cosmology. As such, any evidence for a well-preserved global symmetry would give insight into an important feature of gravity. We argue that a recently reported $2.4σ$ detection of cosmic birefringence in the Cosmic Microwave Background could be the first observational indication of a well-preserved (although spontaneously broken) global symmetry in nature. A compelling solution to explain this measurement is a very light pseudoscalar field tha…
In the report there are presented the general frameworks for the quartet-metric gravity based upon the two physical concepts. First, there exist in space-time the distinct dynamical coordinates, given by a scalar quartet, playing the role of the Higgs fields for gravity. Second, the physical gravity fields arising due to the spontaneous symmetry breaking serve as the dark components of the Universe. It is argued that the mere admixture to metric of the scalar quartet may give rise to an extremely wide spectrum of the emergent gravity phenomena beyond General Relativity (GR). Developing the pro…
Recently, the idea of taking ensemble average over gravity models has been introduced. Based on this idea, we study the ensemble average over (effectively) all the gravity models (constructed from Ricci scalar) dubbing the name über-gravity which is a {\it{fixed point}} in the model space. The über-gravity has interesting universal properties, independent from the choice of basis: $i)$ it mimics Einstein-Hilbert gravity for high-curvature regime, $ii)$ it predicts stronger gravitational force for an intermediate-curvature regime, $iii)$ surprisingly, for low-curvature regime, i.e. $R<R_0$ wher…
There is undetermined potential function $V(ϕ)$ in the action of mimetic gravity which should be resolved through physical means. In general relativity(GR), the static spherically symmetric(SSS) solution to the Einstein equation is a benchmark and its deformation also plays a crucial role in mimetic gravity. The equation of motion is provided with high nonlinearity, but we can reduce primal nonlinearity to a frequent Riccati form in the SSS case of mimetic gravity. In other words, we obtain an expression of solution to the functional differential equation of motion with any potential function.…
