World Scientific Series in Contemporary Chemical Physics - Vol. 25
QUANTUM FLUCTUATIONS OF SPACETIME
by Lawrence B Crowell (Alpha Institute of Advanced Study, Hungary)
Table of Contents (82k) Chapter 1: Why Quantum Fluctuations of Spacetime? (841k)
Three key aspects of quantum gravity are considered in this book: phenomenology, potential experimental aspects and foundational theory. The phenomenology is the treatment of metric quantum fluctuations as torsional curves that deviate from classical expectations. This leads to possible experimental configurations that may detect such fluctuations. Most of these proposed experiments are quantum optical measurements of subtle quantum gravity effects in the interaction of photons and atoms. The foundational discussions attempt to find an substratum to string theories, which are motivated by the phenomenological treatment. Quantum gravity is not the quantization of general relativity, but is instead the embedding of quantum theory and gravitation into a more fundamental field theoretic framework.
Contents:
- Why Quantum Fluctuations of Spacetime?
- Quantum Fluctuations and
Spacetime
- Detection of Quantum Gravity Fluctuations
- Quantum Gravity Fluctuations, Strings and Two-Dimensional D-Branes
- Topology, Extra Large Dimensions and the Higgs Field
- Zeta Functions, Topological Quantum Numbers and M-Theory
- The Generalized Uncertainty Principle
- Octonionic Quantum Gravity
- Physical Law From No Law
Readership: Professionals, researchers and quantum optical experimentalists.
| 388pp |
Pub. date: Dec 2005 |
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