Quantum Gravity, or The Art of Building Spacetime

Abstract

The method of four-dimensional Causal Dynamical Triangulations provides a background-independent definition of the sum over geometries in quantum gravity, in the presence of a positive cosmological constant. We present the evidence accumulated to date that a macroscopic four-dimensional world can emerge from this theory dynamically. Using computer simulations we observe in the Euclidean sector a universe whose scale factor exhibits the same dynamics as that of the simplest mini-superspace models in quantum cosmology, with the distinction that in the case of causal dynamical triangulations the effective action for the scale factor is not put in by hand but obtained by integrating out {\it in the quantum theory} the full set of dynamical degrees of freedom except for the scale factor itself.