Carlo Rovelli on Loop Quantum Gravity

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relativity and quantum the-ory have profoundly changed our viewofthe world.Furthermore,both theo-ries have been verified to extraordinaryaccuracy in the last several decades.Loop quantum gravity takes this novel view ofthe world seriously,by incorpo-rating the notions ofspace and timefrom general relativity directly intoquantum field theory.The theory thatresults is radically different from conventional quantum field theory.Notonly does it provide a precise mathemat-ical picture ofquantum space and time,but it also offers a solution to long-stand-ing problems such as the thermodynam-ics ofblack holes and the physics oftheBig Bang.The most appealing aspect ofloopquantum gravity is that it predicts thatspace is not infinitely divisible,but that ithas a granular structure.The size of these elementary “quanta ofspace”canbe computed explicitly within the the-ory,in an analogous way to the energy levels ofthe hydrogenatom.In the last 50 years or so,many approaches to con-structing a quantum theory ofgravity have been explored,but only two have reached a full mathematical description of the quantum properties ofthe gravitational field:loop gravityand string theory.The last decade has seen major advances inboth loop gravity and string theory,but it is important to stressthat both theories harbour unresolved issues.More impor-tantly,neither ofthem has been tested experimentally.Thereis hope that direct experimental support might come soon,but for the moment either theory could be right,partiallyright or simply wrong.However,the fact that we have two welldeveloped,tentative theories ofquantum gravity is veryencouraging.We are not completely in the dark,nor lost in amultitude ofalternative theories,and quantum gravity offersa fascinating glimpse ofthe fundamental structure ofnature.

Space and quantum space

Loop quantum gravity changes the way we think about thestructure ofspace.To illustrate this,let me start by recallingsome basic ideas about the notion ofspace and the way thesewere modified by general relativity.Space is commonlythought ofas a fixed background that has a geometrical struc-ture – as a sort of“stage”on which mat-ter moves independently.This way of understanding space is not,however,asold as you might think;it was introducedby Isaac Newton in the 17th century.Indeed,the dominant view ofspace thatwas held from the time ofAristotle tothat ofDescartes was that there is nospace without matter.Space was anabstraction ofthe fact that some parts of matter can be in touch with others.Newton introduced the idea ofphysi-cal space as an independent entitybecause he needed it for his dynamicaltheory.In order for his second law of motion to make any sense,accelerationmust make sense.Newton assumed thatthere is a physical background spacewith respect to which acceleration isdefined.The Newtonian picture oftheworld is therefore a background spaceon which matter moves. A small but momentous change in theNewtonian picture came from the visionary work ofMichael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwellat the end ofthe 19th century.Faraday and Maxwell intro-duced a novel object that could move in space.This objectwas called the field,and Faraday visualized it as a set oflinesthat fill space.The lines start and end on electric charges,butthey can exist and have independent dynamics even when nocharges are present.In this latter case the field lines have noends,and therefore form closed loops.Maxwell then trans-lated Faraday’s intuition into equations,in which these linesand loops became the electric and magnetic fields. A few decades later Albert Einstein came up with specialrelativity,in which the geometry ofspace and time is slightlymodified to make it compatible with Maxwell’s field equa-tions.Today our basic understanding ofthe material world isentirely in terms offields.The fundamental forces in natureare described by Yang–Mills fields,which are similar to theelectromagnetic field.Fundamental particles,such as quarksand electrons,are described by “fermionic”fields,and Higgsparticles,which endow particles with mass,are described by“scalar”fields.Quantum field theory tells us that all fieldsundergo quantum fluctuations and have particle-like proper-ties.In the Standard Model ofparticle physics – which com-prises the quantum field theories ofelectromagnetism and

QUANTUM GRAVITY

Loop gravity combines general relativity and quantum theory but it leaves no roomfor space as we know it – only networks of loops that turn space–time into spinfoam

Loop quantum gravity

Carlo Rovelli

Weaving space – the 3D structure of space in loopquantum gravity can be visualized as a net of intersecting loops. This simple model was built by the author using key-rings, before spin networksand the physical significance of the nodes werediscovered.

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2the strong and weak nuclear forces –these fields are assumed to exist againsta fixed background space–time that issimilar to that described by Newton.The truly major change in our under-standing ofspace and time came withgeneral relativity.In 1915 Einstein real-ized that gravity also had to be de-scribed by a field theory in order to beconsistent with special relativity.He suc-ceeded in finding the form ofthe gravi-tational field and its field equations,butin doing so he stumbled upon an extra-ordinary result.Einstein found that thegravitational field that he had just intro-duced and the background space thatNewton had introduced 300 years ear-lier are,in fact,the same thing.Theacceleration in Newton’s second law isnot with respect to an absolute back-ground space,but with respect to thesurrounding gravitational field.Newtonhad mistaken the surrounding gravita-tional field for a fixed entity.In generalrelativity there are no fields on space–time,just fields on fields. As long as we stay within the classical regime,rather thanthe quantum one,the gravitational field defines a 4D contin-uum.We can therefore still think ofthe field as a sort of space–time,albeit one that bends,oscillates and obeys fieldequations.However,once we bring quantum mechanics intothe picture this continuum breaks down.Quantum fieldshave a granular structure – the electromagnetic field,forexample,consists ofphotons – and they undergo probabilis-tic fluctuations.It is difficult to think ofspace as a granularand fluctuating object.We can,ofcourse,still call it “space”,or “quantum space”,as indeed I do in this article.But it isreally a quantum field in a world where there are only fieldsover fields,and no remnant ofbackground space.

Loops on loops

The conventional mathematical formalism ofquantum fieldtheory relies very much on the existence ofbackgroundspace.There are therefore two possible strategies that we canadopt to construct a quantum theory ofgravity.One is toundo Einstein’s discovery and to reintroduce a fictitious back-ground space.This can be done by separating the gravita-tional field into the sum oftwo components:one componentis regarded as a background,while the other is treated as thequantum field.We are then left with a background space thatis available for all our calculations,after which we can hope torecover background independence.This is the strategyadopted by those who do not regard the general-relativisticrevolution as fundamental,but as a sort ofaccident.And thisis the strategy adopted in string theory.The second strategy is the one adopted by loop gravity:takegeneral relativity seriously,directly face the problem thatthere is no background space in nature,and reconstructquantum field theory from scratch in a form that does notrequire background space.General ideas on how to do thiswere put forward in the 1950s and 1960s.Charles Misner,now at the University ofMaryland,for example,suggestedusing Feynman’s version ofquantumfield theory,in which the behaviour ofaquantum particle can be calculated bysumming all the possible classical pathsofthe particle.Misner suggested thatcalculations in quantum gravity couldbe performed by summing over all pos-sible space–times – an idea that waslater developed by theorists that in-cluded Steven Hawking at CambridgeUniversity and Jim Hartle at the Uni- versity ofCalifornia in Santa Barbara. John Wheeler ofPrinceton Universitysuggested that space–time must have afoam-like structure at very small scalesand,along with Bryce DeWitt now atTexas University,he introduced the ideaofa “wavefunction over geometries”.This is a function that expresses theprobability ofhaving one space–timegeometry rather than another,in thesame way that the Schrödinger wave-function expresses the probability that aquantum particle is either here or there.This wavefunction over geometriesobeys a very complicated equation thatis now called the Wheeler–DeWitt equation,which is a sort of Schrödinger equation for the gravitational field itself.It isimportant,however,not to confuse the dynamics

in

a gravita-tional ﬁeld with the dynamics

of

the gravitational field itself.(The difference between the two is the same as the differencebetween the equation ofmotion for a particle in an electro-magnetic field and the Maxwell equations for the electromag-netic field itself.)These ideas were brilliant and inspiring,but it was morethan two decades before they become concrete.The turn-around came suddenly at the end ofthe 1980s,when a welldefined mathematical theory that described quantumspace–time began to form.The key input that made the the-ory work was an old idea from particle physics:the natural variables for describing a Yang–Mills field theory are pre-cisely Faraday’s “lines offorce”.A Faraday line can be viewedas an elementary quantum excitation ofthe field,and in theabsence ofcharges these lines must close on themselves toform loops.Loop quantum gravity is the mathematicaldescription ofthe quantum gravitational field in terms of these loops.That is,the loops are quantum excitations oftheFaraday lines offorce ofthe gravitational field.In low-energyapproximations ofthe theory,these loops appear as gravitons – the fundamental particles that carry the gravitational force.This is much the same way that phonons appear in solid-statephysics.In other words,gravitons are not in the fundamentaltheory – as one might expect when trying to formulate a the-ory ofquantum gravity – but they describe collective behav-iour at large scales.The idea that loops are the most natural variables todescribe Yang–Mills fields has attracted the attention ofmanytheoretical physicists,including Kenneth Wilson at Ohio StateUniversity,Alexander Polyakov at Princeton,Stanley Man-delstam at Berkeley and Rodolfo Gambini at the University of Montevideo.But in the past the idea has never really workedwell.Two loops that are infinitesimally separated are two dif-

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1 Spin network

12213121221 /23 /23 /21 /21 /21 /23 /23 /21 /23 /Elementary grains of space are represented by thenodes on a “spin network” (green dots). The lines joining the nodes, or adjacent grains of space, arecalled links. Spins on the links (integer or half-integer numbers) are the quantum numbers thatdetermine the area of the elementary surfacesseparating adjacent grains of space. The quantumnumbers of the nodes, which determine thevolume of the grains, are not indicated. The spinsand the way they come together at the nodes can take on any integer or half-integer value, and aregoverned by the same algebra as angularmomentum in quantum mechanics.

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3ferent loops,and this implies that there are far too many loop variables to describe the degrees offreedom ofthe ﬁeld.The breakthrough came with the realization that this“overcounting”problem disappears in gravity.The reasonwhy is not hard to understand.In gravity the loops themselvesare not in space because there is no space.The loops

are

spacebecause they are the quantum excitations ofthe gravitationalﬁeld,which is the physical space.It therefore makes no senseto think ofa loop being displaced by a small amount in space.There is only sense in the relative location ofa loop withrespect to other loops,and the location ofa loop with respectto the surrounding space is only determined by the otherloops it intersects.A state ofspace is therefore described by anet ofintersecting loops.There is no location

of

the net,butonly location

on

the net itself;there are no loops on space,onlyloops on loops.Loops interact with particles in the same wayas,say,a photon interacts with an electron,except that thetwo are not in space like photons and electrons are.This issimilar to the interaction ofa particle with Newton’s back-ground space,which “guides”it in a straight line.

Spin networks

In 1987 I visited Lee Smolin at Yale University.Smolin andTedJacobson ofthe University ofMaryland had been work-ing on an approximation to quantum gravity,and had foundsome solutions ofthe Wheeler–DeWitt equation that seemedto describe loop excitations ofthe gravitational field.Smolinand I decided to write down the entire theory systematicallyin loop variables,and we were shocked by a remarkable seriesofsurprises.First,the formerly intractable Wheeler–DeWittequation became tractable,and we could find a large class of exact solutions.Second,we had a workable formalism for atruly background-independent quantum field theory.We used a novel formulation ofgeneral relativity that wasdue to Abhay Ashtekar ofPenn State University,who hadcast general relativity in a very similar form to Yang–Millstheory.Einstein’s gravitational field is replaced by a fieldcalled the Ashtekar connection field,which is like the electro-magnetic potential,and this made loop variables very nat-ural.Smolin and I teamed up with Ashtekar to try andunderstand the physical meaning ofthe nets ofloops thathad emerged from the equations.Through various steps weslowly realized that the loops did not describe infinitesimalelements ofspace as we had first thought,but rather finite ele-ments ofspace.We pictured space as a sort ofextremely finefabric that was “weaved”by the loops.Nothing appeared toexist at scales smaller than the structure ofthe weave itself.The idea that there cannot be arbitrary small spatial regionscan be understood from simple considerations ofquantummechanics and classical general relativity.The uncertaintyprinciple states that in order to observe a small region of space–time we need to concentrate a large amount ofenergyand momentum.However,general relativity implies that if we concentrate too much energy and momentum in a smallregion,that region will collapse into a black hole and disap-pear.Putting in the numbers,we find that the minimum size of such a region is ofthe order ofthe Planck length – about 1.6

×

10

–35

m.Loop gravity had begun to make this intuition con-crete,and a picture ofquantum space in terms ofnets of loops was emerging.But at the time we did not really under-stand what that meant.Jorge Pullin ofLouisiana StateUniversity,for instance,remarked that we were not reallyunderstanding the volume ofspace,and instead pointed tothe “nodes”– the points at which loops intersect – as the struc-ture that had to be connected with the volume.It was not until about 1994 that Smolin and I really under-stood what we had stumbled upon,thanks to a calculationthat is routinely performed in quantum theory.By quantizinga theory,certain physical quantities take only discrete values,such as the energy levels in the hydrogen atom.Computingthese quantized values involves solving the eigenvalue prob-lem for the “operator”that represents a particular physicalquantity.We studied the volume ofa region ofspace – or acertain number ofloops – which in general relativity is deter-mined by the gravitational field.By solving the eigenvalueproblem ofthe volume operator,we found that the eigenval-ues were discrete – that is,there are elementary quanta ofvol-ume,or elementary “grains ofspace”.Furthermore,thesequanta ofspace resided precisely at the nodes ofthe nets.But space is more than just a collection ofvolume elements.There is also the key fact that some elements are near to oth-ers.A “link”ofthe net – i.e.the portion ofloop between twonodes – indicates precisely the quanta ofspace that are adja-cent to one another.Two adjacent elements ofspace are sep-arated by a surface,and the area ofthis surface turns out to bequantized as well.In fact,it soon became clear that nodescarry quantum numbers ofvolume elements and links carryquantum numbers ofarea elements (figure 1).While unravelling this elegant mathematical description of quantum space,we realized that we had come across some-thing that had already been studied.Some 15 years earlier,Roger Penrose ofOxford University – guided only by hisintuition ofwhat a quantum space could look like – hadinvented precisely the nets carrying the very same quantumnumbers that we were finding.Since these quantum numbersand their algebra looked like the spin angular momentumnumbers ofelementary particles,Penrose called them “spinnetworks”(figure 2).Penrose had invented spin networks outofthe blue,but we were finding the same networks from adirect application ofquantum theory to general relativity.Itwas with Penrose’s help during a summer in Verona,Italy,in1994 that Smolin and I finally solved the problem oftheeigenvalues ofarea and volume.Meanwhile,Chris Isham ofImperial College in London,who was one ofthe founding fathers ofthe background-inde-

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2 Quantum loops

Each node in a spin network determines a cell, or an elementary grain of space. (

a

) Nodes are represented by small black spheres and the links asblack lines, while cells are separated by elementary surfaces shown inpurple. Each surface corresponds to one link, and the structure builds up a3D space. (

b

) When the surfaces are pulled away we can see that thesequence of links form a loop. These are the “loops” of loop quantum gravity.

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