Gravitational Waves and Loop Quantum Gravity

Abstract

Loop Quantum Gravity is a formalism for describing the quantum mechanics of the gravitational field based on the canonical quantization of General Relativity. The most important result of LQG is that geometric quantities such as area and volume are not arbitrary but are quantized in terms of a minimum length. In this paper we investigate the effect of a minimum length in wave propagation. We find that the minimum length, combined with the constancy of the speed of light, induces a quantization of the energy of a gravitational wave.