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.

一个新的范式来处理像广义相对论这样的完全约束理论的动力学，将继续在经典和量子水平上发展。这种范式在于构建离散的理论，使得利息的连续统理论作为一个明确界定的界限而出现。构造离散理论的具体建议，称为“一致离散化”，有几个有吸引力的特点。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的概念问题，但仍然设法提供了一个定义良好的极限，在这个极限中人们可以恢复感兴趣的连续统理论。一个范例出现，这是类似于格点规范理论，其中离散的理论被用于一个限制程序，以定义一个连续统理论的兴趣。这种方法已经成功地应用于某些情况下，时空有一些空间依赖性（即比均匀宇宙学更复杂），但没有真正的自由度，最值得注意的是提供了一个完整的时空的非奇异圈量子引力黑洞的表征。 这个NSF奖项将专注于在日益复杂的情况下应用范例。这包括标量场坍缩形成黑洞和相关模型。同时也提出了进一步研究与量子引力动力学相关的其他课题，如量子力学中的时间问题和测量问题。该研究计划还有助于通过培养博士后研究人员来创造美国物理学的人力资源，并提供了这里介绍的离散化技术在其他科学和工程领域也适用的可能性。