Some Reflections on the Status of Conventional Quantum Theory when Applied to Quantum Gravity
| dc.creator | Isham, C. J. | |
| dc.date | 2002-06-13 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-07T06:04:23Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-07-07T06:04:23Z | |
| dc.description | All current approaches to quantum gravity employ essentially standard quantum theory including, in particular, continuum quantities such as the real or complex numbers. However, I wish to argue that this may be fundamentally wrong in so far as the use of these continuum quantities in standard quantum theory can be traced back to certain {\em a priori} assumptions about the nature of space and time: assumptions that may be incompatible with the view of space and time adopted by a quantum gravity theory. My conjecture is that in, some yet to be determined sense, to each type of space-time there is associated a corresponding type of quantum theory in which continuum quantities do not necessarily appear, being replaced with structures that are appropriate to the specific space-time. Topos theory then arises as a possible tool for `gluing' together these different theories associated with the different space-times. As a concrete example of the use of topos ideas, I summarise recent work applying presheaf theory to the Kochen-Specher theorem and the assignment of values to physical quantities in a quantum theory. | |
| dc.description | Latex2e | |
| dc.identifier | https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0206090 | |
| dc.identifier | http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0206090 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/90280 | |
| dc.subject | Quantum Physics | |
| dc.subject | General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology | |
| dc.title | Some Reflections on the Status of Conventional Quantum Theory when Applied to Quantum Gravity | |
| dc.type | text |