A phenomenological description of space-time noise in quantum gravity

Giovanni Amelino-Camelia ()
Additional contact information
Giovanni Amelino-Camelia: Universitá “La Sapienza”

Nature, 2001, vol. 410, issue 6832, 1065-1067

Abstract: Abstract Space-time ‘foam’ is a geometric picture of the smallest size scales in the Universe, which is characterized mainly by the presence of quantum uncertainties in the measurement of distances. All quantum-gravity theories should predict some kind of foam1,2, but the description of the properties of this foam varies according to the theory, thereby providing a possible means of distinguishing between such theories. I previously showed3 that foam-induced distance fluctuations would introduce a new source of noise to the measurements of gravity-wave interferometers, but the theories are insufficiently developed4 to permit detailed predictions that would be of use to experimentalists. Here I propose a phenomenological approach that directly describes space-time foam, and which leads naturally to a picture of distance fluctuations that is independent of the details of the interferometer. The only unknown in the model is the length scale that sets the overall magnitude of the effect, but recent data5 already rule out the possibility that this length scale could be identified with the ‘string length’ (10-34 m

Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/35074035 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:410:y:2001:i:6832:d:10.1038_35074035

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/35074035

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().