Replacing the Notion of Spacetime Distance by the Notion of Correlation
arXiv:2110.08278 · doi:10.3389/fphy.2021.655857
Abstract
Spacetime is conventionally viewed as a stage on which actors, in the form of fields, move. Here, we explore what may lie beyond this picture. The starting point is the observation that quantum fluctuations of fields are the more strongly correlated the shorter their spacetime distance. As a consequence, the notion of spacetime distance, including the metric as its infinitesimal version, can be replaced by the notion of correlation strength. This suggests a new picture in which abstract (2-point and multi-point) correlators are the primary structure. In general, these abstract correlators can only be described as information theoretic structures and, in principle, they need not bear any relationship to quantum fields or spacetimes. These correlators may allow approximations, however, so that, in certain regimes, they can be mathematically approximately represented as the 2-point and multi-point functions of quantum fields living on a spacetime. In this way, the standard picture of a curved spacetime with fields whose correlators arise from Feynman rules would merely be a convenient approximate picture, while the underlying picture is that of a spacetime-less and field-less information-theoretic structure of abstract correlations.
arXiv comment8 pages
References in corpus (31)
- Hilbert Space Representation of the Minimal Length Uncertainty Relation
- Entropy and Area
- Relational Quantum Mechanics
- Cool horizons for entangled black holes
- Generalized Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Gravity from Micro-Black Hole Gedanken Experiment
- Quantum Gravity from Causal Dynamical Triangulations: A Review
- Entanglement from the vacuum
- Violating Bell's inequalities in the vacuum
- Quantum mechanics and the covariance of physical laws in quantum reference frames
- What is quantum mechanics trying to tell us?
- On Quantum Field Theory with Nonzero Minimal Uncertainties in Positions and Momenta
- A change of perspective: switching quantum reference frames via a perspective-neutral framework
- Quantum clocks and the temporal localisability of events in the presence of gravitating quantum systems
- The Necessity of the Hadamard Condition
- A Generalized Shannon Sampling Theorem, Fields at the Planck Scale as Bandlimited Signals
- Spacetime could be simultaneously continuous and discrete in the same way that information can
- A Covariant Information-Density Cutoff in Curved Space-Time
- Standard model physics from an algebra?
- Information-theoretic natural ultraviolet cutoff for spacetime
- Rethinking Connes' approach to the standard model of particle physics via non-commutative geometry
- Communication through quantum fields near a black hole
- Spacetime Curvature in terms of Scalar Field Propagators
- Shape from sound: toward new tools for quantum gravity
- Indefinite causal structures for continuous-variable systems
- Quantum gravity, information theory and the CMB
- Locality and entanglement in bandlimited quantum field theory
- Natural Covariant Planck Scale Cutoffs and the Cosmic Microwave Background Spectrum
- Quantum Gravity on a Quantum Computer?
- Impact of relativity on particle localizability and ground state entanglement
- Lorentzian Spectral Geometry with Causal Sets
- Constructive Gravity: Foundations and Applications
Cited by in corpus (19)
- Quantum signatures of black hole mass superpositions
- Quantum superpositions of Minkowski spacetime
- The geometry of spacetime from quantum measurements
- Lensing of Vacuum Entanglement near Schwarzschild Black Holes
- A general framework for cyclic and fine-tuned causal models and their compatibility with space-time
- Spacetime curvature from ultra rapid measurements of quantum fields
- Embedding cyclic information-theoretic structures in acyclic spacetimes: no-go results for indefinite causality
- Can the latent signatures of quantum superposition be detected through correlation harvesting?
- Modest holography and bulk reconstruction in asymptotically flat spacetimes
- Harvesting Fermionic Field Entanglement in Schwarzschild Spacetime
- Deep Learning Metric Detectors in General Relativity
- 3D-Space and the preferred basis cannot uniquely emerge from the quantum structure
- Entanglement is better teleported than transmitted
- Entanglement between accelerated probes in a de Sitter spacetime
- Bell's nonlocality and gravity
- Quantum lattice models that preserve continuous translation symmetry
- Space-time superpositions as fluctuating geometries
- World quantum gravity: Quantum test objects and Synge's world function
- Holographic reconstruction of asymptotically flat spacetimes