The Dynamics of Quantum Gravity

量子引力动力学

• 批准号: 0968871
• 负责人: Jorge Pullin
• 金额: $ 36万
• 依托单位: Louisiana State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-08-01 至 2014-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0968871&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dynamics; Quantum; Gravity

A new paradigm for dealing with the dynamics of totally constrained theories like general relativity will continue to be developed both at a classical and quantum level. The paradigm consists in constructing discrete theories such that the continuum theory of interest arises as a well defined limit. The specific proposal for constructing the discrete theories, called "uniform discretizations" has several attractive features. In particular the discrete theories are free of constraints and therefore avoid many of the hard conceptual problems that complicate traditional quantum gravity, and nevertheless manage to provide a well defined limit in which one recovers the continuum theory of interest. A paradigm emerges that is analogous to that of lattice gauge theory, where discrete theories are used in a limiting procedure to define a continuum theory of interest. This approach has already been applied successfully in some situations where the space-time has some spatial dependence (i.e. more complicated than homogeneous cosmologies) but without genuine degrees of freedom, most notably providing a characterization of the complete space-time of a non-singular loop quantum gravity black hole. This NSF award will focus on applying the paradigm in situations of increasing complexity. This includes the collapse of scalar fields to form black holes and related models. It is also proposed to further other topics related to the dynamics of quantum gravity like the problem of time and the issue of measurement in quantum mechanics. This research program also aids in the creation of human resources in US physics through the training of a postdoctoral researcher and provides the possibility that the discretization techniques introduced here may have applicability in other areas of science and engineering as well.

用于处理像广义相对论这样的完全受限理论的动力学的新范式将继续在经典和量子层面上发展。该范式在于构建离散理论，使得兴趣的连续统理论作为明确定义的极限而出现。构建离散理论的具体建议，称为“均匀离散化”，有几个吸引人的特点。特别是，离散理论不受约束，因此避免了许多使传统量子引力复杂化的困难概念问题，并且仍然设法提供一个明确定义的限制，在该限制中人们可以恢复感兴趣的连续统理论。出现了一种类似于晶格规范理论的范式，其中离散理论用于限制过程来定义感兴趣的连续统理论。这种方法已经成功地应用于时空具有一定空间依赖性（即比同质宇宙学更复杂）但没有真正的自由度的某些情况，最值得注意的是提供了非奇异的完整时空的表征圈量子引力黑洞。 该 NSF 奖项将重点关注在日益复杂的情况下应用该范式。这包括标量场塌缩形成黑洞和相关模型。它还建议进一步讨论与量子引力动力学相关的其他主题，例如时间问题和量子力学中的测量问题。该研究计划还通过培训博士后研究员来帮助美国物理学领域的人力资源创建，并提供了此处介绍的离散化技术也适用于其他科学和工程领域的可能性。