Phase transition in quantum gravity

Abstract

A fundamental problem with attempting to quantize general relativity is its perturbative non-renormalizability. However, this fact does not rule out the possibility that non-perturbative effects can be computed, at least in some approximation. We outline a quantum field theory calculation, based on general relativity as the classical theory, which implies a phase transition in quantum gravity. The order parameters are composite fields derived from spacetime metric functions. These are massless below a critical energy scale and become massive above it. There is a corresponding breaking of classical symmetry.

5 pages (Latex), 1 eps figure. For Proceedings of the 8th. Canadian Conference on General Relativity and Relativistic Astrophysics

References in corpus (2)

• Canonical quantization of cylindrical gravitational waves with two polarizations
• Symmetry reduced Einstein gravity and generalized sigma and chiral models