Rationale for a correlated worldline theory of quantum gravity

Abstract

It is argued that gravity should cause a breakdown of quantum mechanics, at low energies, accessible to table-top experiments. It is then shown that one can formulate a theory of quantum gravity in which gravitational correlations exist between worldline or worldsheet paths, for the particle or field of interest. Using a generalized equivalence principle, one can give a unique form for the correlators, yielding a theory with no adjustable parameters. A key feature of the theory is the ‘bunching’ of quantum trajectories caused by the gravitational correlations—this is not a decoherence or a ‘collapse’ mechanism. This bunching causes a breakdown of the superposition principle for large masses, with a very rapid crossover to classical behaviour at an energy scale which depends on the physical structure of the object. Formal details, and applications of the theory, are kept to a minimum in this paper; but we show how physical quantities can be calculated, and give a detailed discussion of the dynamics of a single particle.

Keywords

• quantum gravity
• quantum mechanics
• decoherence