Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MODERN PHYSICS D
Volume 26, Issue 12, Pages -Publisher
WORLD SCIENTIFIC PUBL CO PTE LTD
DOI: 10.1142/S0218271817430131
Keywords
Quantum gravity; quantum foundations; decoherence
Categories
Funding
- Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics at Caltech
- DOE [DE-SC0011632]
- Foundational Questions Institute
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We argue in a model-independent way that the Hilbert space of quantum gravity is locally finite-dimensional. In other words, the density operator describing the state corresponding to a small region of space, when such a notion makes sense, is defined on a finite-dimensional factor of a larger Hilbert space. Because quantum gravity potentially describes superpositions of different geometries, it is crucial that we associate Hilbert-space factors with spatial regions only on individual decohered branches of the universal wave function. We discuss some implications of this claim, including the fact that quantum-field theory cannot be a fundamental description of nature.
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