Operational verification of the existence of a spacetime manifold

Abstract

We argue that there exists an operational way to establish the observability of the notions of space and time. Specifically, we propose a theory-independent protocol for a gedanken-experiment, whose outcome is a signal establishing the observability of the spacetime manifold, without a priori assuming its existence. The experimental signal contains the information about the dimension and the topology of spacetime (with the currently achievable precision), and establishes its manifold structure, while respecting its underlying diffeomorphism symmetry. We also introduce and discuss appropriate criteria for the concept of emergence of spacetime, which any tentative theoretical model of physics must satisfy in order to claim that spacetime does emerge from some more fundamental concepts.

arXiv commentv3: published version, 13+4 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (7)

• A Large Mass Hierarchy from a Small Extra Dimension
• An Alternative to Compactification
• LQG vertex with finite Immirzi parameter
• Nonperturbative Quantum Gravity
• A New Spin Foam Model for 4d Gravity
• The causal set approach to quantum gravity
• Recovering General Relativity from a Planck scale discrete theory of quantum gravity