Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Cosmology, Relativity, and Gravity Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
Articles 1 - 3 of 3
Full-Text Articles in Cosmology, Relativity, and Gravity
The Fine-Tuning Of Nomic Behavior In Multiverse Scenarios, Max Lewis Edward Andrews
The Fine-Tuning Of Nomic Behavior In Multiverse Scenarios, Max Lewis Edward Andrews
Masters Theses
The multiverse hypothesis (the view that there is not just one world or universe in existence, bur rather that there are many) is the leading alternative to the competing fine-tuning hypothesis (the laws of physics and constants are fine-tuned for the existence of life). The multiverse dispels many aspects of the fine-tuning argument by suggesting that there are different initial conditions in each universe, varying constants of physics, and the laws of nature lose their known arbitrary values; thus, making the previous single-universe argument from fine- tuning incredibly weak. The position that will be advocated will be that a form …
Effective Field Theory Approach To Gravitationally Induced Decoherence, M. P. Blencowe
Effective Field Theory Approach To Gravitationally Induced Decoherence, M. P. Blencowe
Dartmouth Scholarship
Adopting the viewpoint that the standard perturbative quantization of general relativity provides an effective description of quantum gravity that is valid at ordinary energies, we show that gravity as an environment induces the rapid decoherence of stationary matter superposition states when the energy differences in the superposition exceed the Planck energy scale.
Semiclassical Partition Functions For Gravity With Cosmic Strings, Christopher L. Duston
Semiclassical Partition Functions For Gravity With Cosmic Strings, Christopher L. Duston
Physics Faculty Publications
In this paper we describe an approach to construct semiclassical partition functions in gravity which are complete in the sense that they contain a complete description of the differentiable structures of the underlying 4-manifold. In addition, we find our construction naturally includes cosmic strings. We prove that the mass density of these strings uniquely specifies the topology of the leaves of a dimension 2 foliation, and conjecture that spacetime topology emerges as a result of the symmetry breaking of the fundamental fields. We discuss some possible applications of the partition functions in the fields of both quantum gravity and topological …