Quantum gravity without space-time singularities or horizons

Abstract

In an attempt to re-establish space-time as an essential frame for formulating quantum gravity - rather than an "emergent" one -, we find that exact invariance under scale transformations is an essential new ingredient for such a theory. Use is made of the principle of "black hole complementarity", the notion that observers entering a black hole describe its dynamics in a way that appears to be fundamentally different from the description by an outside observer. These differences can be boiled down to conformal transformations. If we add these to our set of symmetry transformations, black holes, space-time singularities, and horizons disappear, while causality and locality may survive as important principles for quantum gravity.

10 pages, 3 figures (postscript). Presented at the Erice Summerschool of Subnuclear Physics 2009

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Entanglement entropy of black holes
• A class of elementary particle models without any adjustable real parameters
• The Conformal Constraint in Canonical Quantum Gravity
• Probing the small distance structure of canonical quantum gravity using the conformal group
• Asymptotic safety and the cosmological constant
• Compact Time and Determinism for Bosons: foundations
• Classical and Quantum Nonlocal Supergravity
• Asymptotic symmetry algebra of conformal gravity
• Conformal theory of everything
• Classical and holographic aspects of conformal gravity in four dimensions