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General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

arXiv:0711.3048 (gr-qc)
[Submitted on 20 Nov 2007]

Title:Volumes of Space as Subsystems

Authors:Federico Piazza, Fabio Costa
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Abstract: As a novel approach with possible relevance to semiclassical gravity, we propose to define regions of space as quantum subsystems. After recalling how to divide a generic quantum system into ``parts'', we apply this idea to a free scalar field in Minkowski space and we compare two different localization schemes. The first scheme is the standard one, induced by the local relativistic fields; the alternative scheme that we consider is the one induced by the Newton-Wigner operators. If degrees of freedom are divided according to the latter, the Hamiltonian of the field exhibits a certain amount of non-locality. Moreover, when a region of space is cut off from the rest according to the Newton-Wigner scheme, the geometric entropy is finite and exhibits a sensible thermodynamic behaviour.
Comments: 10 pages
Subjects: General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc); High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
Report number: PoS(QG-Ph)032
Cite as: arXiv:0711.3048 [gr-qc]
  (or arXiv:0711.3048v1 [gr-qc] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.0711.3048

Submission history

From: Federico Piazza [view email]
[v1] Tue, 20 Nov 2007 01:18:52 UTC (56 KB)
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