May 8–12, 2023
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
America/Toronto timezone

The emergence of spacetime is governed by a quantum Mach's principle

May 12, 2023, 11:45 a.m.
45m
PI/4-405 - Bob Room (Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics)

PI/4-405 - Bob Room

Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

60

Speaker

Lee Smolin (Perimeter Institute)

Description

"I describe a candidate for a fundamental physical theory called the causal theory of views. This describes a world constructed by a continual creation of events; where an event is a transition at which a small portion of the possible
becomes actual. I first recall older results which includes the emergence of space and, with space, a non-relativistic N-body quantum dynamics. I next describe recent progress on this model including, in a different limit, a formulation of a cut off quantum field theory, which we describe in terms of an S-Matrix formulation of amplitudes.

The dynamics is specified by an action principle consisting of a kinetic energy and potential energy term.
The former are based on measures of how quickly components of causal change do so with respect to averaged notions. The potential energy terms measure how much local moves alter an observer's ""view"" of the universe, as seen from their perspective.

These results show that quantum dynamics is restored in an N to infinity limit. Measurable non-linear corrections to quantum dynamics emerge to higher order in 1/sqrt{N}. "

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