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Antonino Marciano

Publications and source records attributed to Antonino Marciano.

103 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

Coherent states for FLRW space-times in loop quantum gravity

We construct a class of coherent spin-network states that capture proprieties of curved space-times of the Friedmann-Lamaître-Robertson-Walker type on which they are peaked. The data coded by a coherent state are associated to a cellular decomposition of a spatial ($t=$const.) section with dual graph given by the complete five-vertex graph, though the construction can be easily generalized to other graphs. The labels of coherent states are complex $SL(2, \mathbbm{C})$ variables, one for each link of the graph and are computed through a smearing process starting from a continuum extrinsic and intrinsic geometry of the canonical surface. The construction covers both Euclidean and Lorentzian signatures; in the Euclidean case and in the limit of flat space we reproduce the simplicial 4-simplex semiclassical states used in Spin Foams.

gr-qc↗

Big Bounce in Dipole Cosmology

We derive the cosmological Big Bounce scenario from the dipole approximation of Loop Quantum Gravity. We show that a non-singular evolution takes place for any matter field and that, by considering a massless scalar field as a relational clock for the dynamics, the semi-classical proprieties of an initial state are preserved on the other side of the bounce. This model thus enhances the relation between Loop Quantum Cosmology and the full theory.

gr-qc↗

Testing quantum-spacetime relativity with gamma-ray telescopes

Observations of gamma-ray bursts are being used to test for a momentum dependence of the speed of photons, partly motivated by preliminary results reported in analyses of some quantum-spacetime scenarios. The relationship between time of arrival, momentum of the photon and redshift of the source which is used for these purposes assumes a "breakdown" of relativistic symmetries, meaning that it is a preferred-frame scenario which does not satisfy the Relativity Principle. The alternative hypothesis of a "deformation" of relativistic symmetries, which preserves the Relativity Principle by adopting deformed laws of relativistic transformation between observers, could not so far be tested in gamma-ray-burst observations because it was not known how to formulate it in expanding spacetimes. We here provide such a formulation, and we find that also for the symmetry-deformation scenario the analysis of gamma-ray-burst data take us very close to the desired "Planck-scale sensitivity".

astro-ph.HE↗

Interplay between curvature and Planck-scale effects in astrophysics and cosmology

Several recent studies have considered the implications for astrophysics and cosmology of some possible nonclassical properties of spacetime at the Planck scale. The new effects, such as a Planck-scale-modified energy-momentum (dispersion) relation, are often inferred from the analysis of some quantum versions of Minkowski spacetime, and therefore the relevant estimates depend heavily on the assumption that there could not be significant interplay between Planck-scale and curvature effects. We here scrutinize this assumption, using as guidance a quantum version of de Sitter spacetime with known Inonu-Wigner contraction to a quantum Minkowski spacetime. And we show that, contrary to common (but unsupported) beliefs, the interplay between Planck-scale and curvature effects can be significant. Within our illustrative example, in the Minkowski limit the quantum-geometry deformation parameter is indeed given by the Planck scale, while in the de Sitter picture the parameter of quantization of geometry depends both on the Planck scale and the curvature scalar. For the much-studied case of Planck-scale effects that intervene in the observation of gamma-ray bursts we can estimate the implications of "quantum spacetime curvature" within robust simplifying assumptions. For cosmology at the present stage of the development of the relevant mathematics one cannot go beyond semiheuristic reasoning, and we here propose a candidate approximate description of a quantum FRW geometry, obtained by patching together pieces (with different spacetime curvature) of our quantum de Sitter. This semiheuristic picture, in spite of its limitations, provides rather robust evidence that in the early Universe the interplay between Planck-scale and curvature effects could have been particularly significant.

gr-qc↗

Triangulated Loop Quantum Cosmology: Bianchi IX and inhomogenous perturbations

We develop the "triangulated" version of loop quantum cosmology, recently introduced in the literature. We focus on the "dipole" cosmology, where space is a three-sphere and the triangulation is formed by two tetrahedra. We show that the discrete fiducial connection has a simple and appealing geometrical interpretation and we correct the ansatz on the relation between the model variables and the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker scale factor. The modified ansatz leads to the convergence of the Hamiltonian constraint to the continuum one. We then ask which degrees of freedom are captured by this model. We show that the model is rich enough to describe the (anisotropic) Bianchi IX Universe, and give the explicit relation between the Bianchi IX variables and the variables of the model. We discuss the possibility of using this path in order to define the quantization of the Bianchi IX Universe. The model contains more degrees of freedom than Bianchi IX, and therefore captures some inhomogeneous degrees of freedom as well. Inhomogeneous degrees of freedom can be expanded in representations of the SU(2) Bianchi IX isometry group, and the dipole model captures the lowest integer representation of these, connected to hyper-spherical harmonic of angular momentum j=1.

gr-qc↗

Twisted Hopf symmetries of canonical noncommutative spacetimes and the no-pure-boost principle

We study the twisted-Hopf-algebra symmetries of observer-independent canonical spacetime noncommutativity, for which the commutators of the spacetime coordinates take the form [x^{mu},x^{nu}]=i theta^{mu nu} with observer-independent (and coordinate-independent) theta^{mu nu}. We find that it is necessary to introduce nontrivial commutators between transformation parameters and spacetime coordinates, and that the form of these commutators implies that all symmetry transformations must include a translation component. We show that with our noncommutative transformation parameters the Noether analysis of the symmetries is straightforward, and we compare our canonical-noncommutativity results with the structure of the conserved charges and the "no-pure-boost" requirement derived in a previous study of kappa-Minkowski noncommutativity. We also verify that, while at intermediate stages of the analysis we do find terms that depend on the ordering convention adopted in setting up the Weyl map, the final result for the conserved charges is reassuringly independent of the choice of Weyl map and (the corresponding choice of) star product.

hep-th↗

On the 5D differential calculus and translation transformations in 4D kappa-Minkowski noncommutative spacetime

We perform a Noether analysis for a description of translation transformations in 4D $κ$-Minkowski noncommutative spacetime which is based on the structure of a 5D differential calculus. The techniques that some of us had previously developed (hep-th/0607221) for a description of translation transformations based on a 4D differential calculus turn out to be applicable without any modification, and they allow us to show that the basis usually adopted for the 5D calculus does not take into account certain aspects of the structure of time translations in $κ$-Minkowski. We propose a change of basis for the 5D calculus which leads to a more intuitive description of time translations.

hep-th↗

Fock space, quantum fields and kappa-Poincaré symmetries

We study the quantization of a linear scalar field, whose symmetries are described by the kappa-Poincare' Hopf-algebra, via deformed Fock space construction. The one-particle sector of the theory exhibits a natural (planckian) cut-off for the field modes. At the multi-particle level the non-trivial co-algebra structure of kappa-Poincare' leads to a deformed bosonization in the construction of Fock space states. These physical states carry energy-momentum charges which are divergenceless and obey a deformed dispersion relation.

hep-th↗

Symplectic geometry and Noether charges for Hopf algebra space-time symmetries

There has been a certain interest in some recent works in the derivation of Noether charges for Hopf-algebra space-time symmetries. Such analyses relied rather heavily on delicate manipulations of the fields of non-commuting coordinates whose charges were under study. Here we derive the same charges in a "coordinate-independent" symplectic-geometry type of approach and find results that are consistent with the ones of hep-th/0607221.

hep-th↗

Heisenberg Evolution in a Quantum Theory of Noncommutative Fields

A quantum theory of noncommutative fields was recently proposed by Carmona, Cortez, Gamboa and Mendez (hep-th/0301248). The implications of the noncommutativity of the fields, intended as the requirements $[ϕ,ϕ^{+}]=θδ^{3}(x-x^{\prime}), [π,π^{+}]=Bδ^{3}(x-x^{\prime}) $, were analyzed on the basis of an analogy with previous results on the so-called ``noncommutative harmonic oscillator construction". Some departures from Lorentz symmetry turned out to play a key role in the emerging framework. We first consider the same hamiltonian proposed in hep-th/0301248, and we show that the theory can be analyzed straightforwardly within the framework of Heisenberg evolution equation without any need of making reference to the ``noncommutative harmonic oscillator construction". We then consider a rather general class of alternative hamiltonians, and we observe that violations of Lorentz invariance are inevitably encountered. These violations must therefore be viewed as intrinsically associated with the proposed type of noncommutativity of fields, rather than as a consequence of a specific choice of Hamiltonian.

hep-th↗