2002/11/01 by Vijay Balasubramanian, Jan de Boer, Balasubramanian, Vijay +4
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.gr-qc/0211003
Talk presented at the 3rd Sakharov International Conference on Physics, Moscow, June 2002; to appear in the proceedings of the conference
arxiv created 2002/11/01 · openalex publication_date 2002/11/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In this talk we entertain the possibility that the synthesis of general covariance and quantum mechanics requires an extension of the basic kinematical setup of quantum mechanics. According to the holographic principle, regions of spacetime bounded by a finite area carry finite entropy. When we in addition assume that the origin of the entropy is a finite dimensional Hilbert space, and apply this to cosmological solutions using a suitable notion of complementarity, we find as a consequence that gravitational effects can lead to dynamical variation in the dimensionality of such Hilbert spaces. This happens generally in cosmological settings like our own universe.