Comments on Challenges for Quantum Gravity

We examine radiative corrections arising from Lorentz violating dimension five operators presumably associated with Planck scale physics as recently considered by Myers and Pospelov. We find that observational data result in bounds on the dimensionless parameters of the order $10^{-15}$. These represent the most stringent bounds on Lorentz violation to date

Searching for spacetime granularity: analyzing a concrete experimental setup

In this work we show that the spin pendulum techniques developed by the E\:{o}t-Wash group could be used to put very stringent bounds on the free parameters of a Lorentz invariant phenomenological model of quantum gravity. The model is briefly described as well as the experimental setup that we have in mind.Comment: 9 pages. For the proceedings of the VIII School of the Gravitation and Mathematical Physics Division of the Mexican Physical Society 'Speakable and unspeakable in gravitational physics: testing gravity from submillimeter to cosmic scale'

Less Decoherence and More Coherence in Quantum Gravity, Inflationary Cosmology and Elsewhere

In Crull (2015) it is argued that, in order to confront outstanding problems in cosmology and quantum gravity, interpretational aspects of quantum theory can by bypassed because decoherence is able to resolve them. As a result, Crull (2015) concludes that our focus on conceptual and interpretational issues, while dealing with such matters in Okon and Sudarsky (2014), is avoidable and even pernicious. Here we will defend our position by showing in detail why decoherence does not help in the resolution of foundational questions in quantum mechanics, such as the measurement problem or the emergence of classicality.Comment: 37 page

Dark energy from quantum gravity discreteness

We argue that discreteness at the Planck scale (naturally expected to arise from quantum gravity) might manifest in the form of minute violations of energy-momentum conservation of the matter degrees of freedom when described in terms of (idealized) smooth fields on a smooth spacetime. In the context of applications to cosmology such `energy diffusion' from the low energy matter degrees of freedom to the discrete structures underlying spacetime leads to the emergence of an effective dark energy term in Einstein's equations. We estimate this effect using a (relational) hypothesis about the materialization of discreteness in quantum gravity which is motivated by the strict observational constraints supporting the validity of Lorentz invariance at low energies. The predictions coming from simple dimensional analysis yield a cosmological constant of the order of magnitude of the observed value without fine tuning.Comment: Typos corrected, closer to published versio