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Spacetime and causality when the notion of distance is replaced by the notion of correlation.

Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery

Quantum field fluctuations are the more strongly correlated the smaller their spacetime distance. As a consequence, the very notion of distance can be replaced by the notion of correlation strength. This suggests a picture in which all degrees of freedom are described by the same abstract structure, namely (multi-point) correlators, a picture which is essentially information theoretic. At low energies, these abstract correlators possess a mathematical representation as the correlation functions of matter fields that live on a curved spacetime with a definite causal structure. As one approaches the Planck scale, the abstract correlators may no longer possess such a representation, thereby superseding the notions of matter and of spacetime, but the abstract correlators can still be examined information theoretically

Mathematics; Relativity And Gravitational Theory; Quantum Theory; Mathematical Physics

video/mp4

Author affiliation: University of Waterloo

2023-10-21

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/86258

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/