Disordered locality in loop quantum gravity states. (English) Zbl 1129.83321

Markopoulou, Fotini; Smolin, Lee

Classical Quantum Gravity 24, No. 15, 3813-3823 (2007).

Summary: We show that loop quantum gravity suffers from a potential problem with non-locality, coming from a mismatch between micro-locality, as defined by the combinatorial structures of their microscopic states, and macro-locality, as defined by the metric which emerges from the low energy limit. As a result, the low energy limit may suffer from a disordered locality characterized by identifications of far away points. We argue that if such defects in locality are rare enough they will be difficult to detect.

MSC:

83C45	Quantization of the gravitational field
83C05	Einstein’s equations (general structure, canonical formalism, Cauchy problems)