Hadamard states from null infinity

Free field theories on a four dimensional, globally hyperbolic spacetime, whose dynamics is ruled by a Green hyperbolic partial differential operator, can be quantized following the algebraic approach. It consists of a two-step procedure: In the first part one identifies the observables of the underlying physical system collecting them in a *-algebra which encodes their relational and structural properties. In the second step one must identify a quantum state, that is a positive, normalized linear functional on the *-algebra out of which one recovers the interpretation proper of quantum mechanical theories via the so-called Gelfand-Naimark-Segal theorem. In between the plethora of possible states, only few of them are considered physically acceptable and they are all characterized by the so-called Hadamard condition, a constraint on the singular structure of the associated two-point function. Goal of this paper is to outline a construction scheme for these states which can be applied whenever the underlying background possesses a null (conformal) boundary. We discuss in particular the examples of a real, massless conformally coupled scalar field and of linearized gravity on a globally hyperbolic and asymptotically flat spacetime.Comment: 23 pages, submitted to the Proceedings of the conference "Quantum Mathematical Physics", held in Regensburg from the 29th of September to the 02nd of October 201

Causal sites as quantum geometry

We propose a structure called a causal site to use as a setting for quantum geometry, replacing the underlying point set. The structure has an interesting categorical form, and a natural "tangent 2-bundle," analogous to the tangent bundle of a smooth manifold. Examples with reasonable finiteness conditions have an intrinsic geometry, which can approximate classical solutions to general relativity. We propose an approach to quantization of causal sites as well.Comment: 21 pages, 3 eps figures; v2: added references; to appear in JM

Lectures on Holographic Space Time

Summary of three talks on the Holographic Space Time models of early universe cosmology, particle physics, and the asymptotically de Sitter final state of our universe.Comment: LaTex2e. 32 page

Causal categories: relativistically interacting processes

A symmetric monoidal category naturally arises as the mathematical structure that organizes physical systems, processes, and composition thereof, both sequentially and in parallel. This structure admits a purely graphical calculus. This paper is concerned with the encoding of a fixed causal structure within a symmetric monoidal category: causal dependencies will correspond to topological connectedness in the graphical language. We show that correlations, either classical or quantum, force terminality of the tensor unit. We also show that well-definedness of the concept of a global state forces the monoidal product to be only partially defined, which in turn results in a relativistic covariance theorem. Except for these assumptions, at no stage do we assume anything more than purely compositional symmetric-monoidal categorical structure. We cast these two structural results in terms of a mathematical entity, which we call a `causal category'. We provide methods of constructing causal categories, and we study the consequences of these methods for the general framework of categorical quantum mechanics.Comment: 43 pages, lots of figure

Structure or Noise?

We show how rate-distortion theory provides a mechanism for automated theory building by naturally distinguishing between regularity and randomness. We start from the simple principle that model variables should, as much as possible, render the future and past conditionally independent. From this, we construct an objective function for model making whose extrema embody the trade-off between a model's structural complexity and its predictive power. The solutions correspond to a hierarchy of models that, at each level of complexity, achieve optimal predictive power at minimal cost. In the limit of maximal prediction the resulting optimal model identifies a process's intrinsic organization by extracting the underlying causal states. In this limit, the model's complexity is given by the statistical complexity, which is known to be minimal for achieving maximum prediction. Examples show how theory building can profit from analyzing a process's causal compressibility, which is reflected in the optimal models' rate-distortion curve--the process's characteristic for optimally balancing structure and noise at different levels of representation.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures; http://cse.ucdavis.edu/~cmg/compmech/pubs/son.htm

Algebraic constructive quantum field theory: Integrable models and deformation techniques

Several related operator-algebraic constructions for quantum field theory models on Minkowski spacetime are reviewed. The common theme of these constructions is that of a Borchers triple, capturing the structure of observables localized in a Rindler wedge. After reviewing the abstract setting, we discuss in this framework i) the construction of free field theories from standard pairs, ii) the inverse scattering construction of integrable QFT models on two-dimensional Minkowski space, and iii) the warped convolution deformation of QFT models in arbitrary dimension, inspired from non-commutative Minkowski space.Comment: Review article, 57 pages, 3 figure