Quantum Geometry and Gravity

Abstract

The geometro-stochastic method of quantization provides a framework for quantum general relativity, in which the principal frame bundles of local Lorentz frames that underlie the fibre-theoretical approach to classical general relativity are replaced by Poincaré-covariant quantum frame bundles. In the semiclassical regime for quantum field theory in curved spacetime, where the gravitational field is not quantized, the elements of these local quantum frames are generalized coherent states, which emerge naturally from phase space representations of the Poincaré group. Due to their informational completeness, these quantum frames are capable of taking over the role played by complete sets of observables in conventional quantum theory. The propagation of quantum-geometric fields proceeds by path integral methods, based on parallel transport along broken paths consisting of arcs of geodesics of the Levi-Civita connection. The formulation of quantum gravity within this framework necessitates the transition to quantum superframe bundles and a quantum gravitational supergroup capable of incorporating diffeomorphism invariance into the framework. This results in a geometric version of quantum gravity which shares some conceptual features with covariant as well as with canonical gravity, but which avoids the foundational and the mathematical difficulties encountered by these two approaches.