2025/06/20 by Muciño, R., Okon, E., Sudarsky, D. +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #History and Philosophy of Physics (physics.hist-ph) #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2506.17149
openalex publication_date 2025/06/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
A theory of quantum gravity consists of a gravitational framework which, unlike general relativity, takes into account the quantum character of matter. In spite of impressive advances, no fully satisfactory, self-consistent and empirically viable theory with those characteristics has ever been constructed. A successful semiclassical gravity model, in which the classical Einstein tensor couples to the expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor of quantum matter fields, would, at the very least, constitute a useful stepping stone towards quantum gravity. However, not only no empirically viable semiclassical theory has ever been proposed, but the self-consistency of semiclassical gravity itself has been called into question repeatedly over the years. Here, we put forward a fully self-consistent, empirically viable semiclassical gravity framework, in which the expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor of a quantum field, evolving via a relativistic objective collapse dynamics, couples to a fully classical Einstein tensor. We present the general framework, a concrete example, and briefly explore possible empirical consequences of our model.