Authors: Kate Jeffery, Robert Pollack, and Carlo Rovelli
Year: 2019

We study the statistical underpinnings of life, in particular its increase in order and complexity over evolutionary time. We question some common assumptions about the thermodynamics of life. We recall that contrary to widespread belief, even in a closed system entropy growth can accompany an increase in macroscopic order. We view metabolism in living things as microscopic variables directly driven by the second law of thermodynamics, while viewing the macroscopic variables of structure, complexity and homeostasis as mechanisms that are entropically favored because they open channels for entropy to grow via metabolism. This perspective reverses the conventional relation between structure and metabolism, by emphasizing the role of structure for metabolism rather than the converse. Structure extends in time, preserving information along generations, particularly in the genetic code, but also in human culture. We argue that increasing complexity is an inevitable tendency for systems with these dynamics and explain this with the notion of metastable states, which are enclosed regions of the phase-space that we call “bubbles,” and channels between these, which are discovered by random motion of the system. We consider that more complex systems inhabit larger bubbles (have more available states), and also that larger bubbles are more easily entered and less easily exited than small bubbles. The result is that the system entropically wanders into ever-larger bubbles in the foamy phase space, becoming more complex over time. This formulation makes intuitive why the increase in order/complexity over time is often stepwise and sometimes collapses catastrophically, as in biological extinction.

Authors: Carlo Rovelli
Year: 2020

I study the physical nature of traces (or memories). Surprisingly, (i) systems separation with (ii) temperature differences and (iii) long thermalization times, are sufficient conditions to produce macroscopic traces. Traces of the past are ubiquitous because these conditions are largely satisfied in our universe. I quantify these thermodynamical conditions for memory and derive an expression for the maximum amount of information stored in such memories, as a function of the relevant thermodynamical parameters. This mechanism transforms low entropy into available information.

Authors: Carlo Rovelli
Year: 2019

The Einstein equations allow solutions containing closed timelike curves. These have generated much puzzlement and suspicion that they could imply paradoxes. I show that puzzlement and paradoxes disappears if we discuss carefully the physics of the irreversible phenomena in the context of these solutions.

Authors: Fabio D’Ambrosio, Marios Christodoulou, Pierre Martin-Dussaud, Carlo Rovelli, and Farshid Soltani
Year: 2021

At the end of Hawking evaporation, the horizon of a black hole enters a physical region where quantum gravity cannot be neglected. The physics of this region has not been much explored. We characterise its physics and introduce a technique to study it.

Authors: Johannes Münch
Year: 2020

The fate of matter forming a black hole is still an open problem, although models of quantum gravity corrected black holes are available. In loop quantum gravity (LQG) models were presented, which resolve the classical singularity in the centre of the black hole by means of a black-to-white hole transition, but neglect the collapse process. The situation is similar in other quantum gravity approaches, where eternal non-singular models are available. In this paper, a strategy is presented to generalise these eternal models to dynamical collapse models by surface matching. Assuming 1) the validity of a static quantum black hole spacetime outside the collapsing matter, 2) homogeneity of the collapsing matter, and 3) differentiability at the surface of the matter fixes the dynamics of the spacetime uniquely. It is argued that these assumptions resemble a collapse of pressure-less dust and thus generalises the Oppenheimer-Snyder-Datt model, although no precise model of the matter has to be assumed. Hawking radiation is systematically neglected in this approach. The junction conditions and the spacetime dynamics are discussed generically for bouncing black hole spacetimes, as proposed by LQG, although the scheme is approach independent. Further, the equations are explicitly solved for the recent model [1] and a global spacetime picture of the collapse is achieved. The causal structure is discussed in detail and the Penrose diagram is constructed. The trajectory of the collapsing matter is completely constructed from an inside and outside observer point of view. The general analysis shows that the matter is collapsing and re-expanding and crosses the Penrose diagram diagonally. This way the infinite tower of Penrose diagrams, as proposed by several LQG models, is generically not cut out. Questions about different timescales of the collapse for in- and outside observers can be answered.

Authors: Pietro Dona and Simone Speziale
Year: 2021

We describe a technique to study the asymptotics of SL(2,C) invariant tensors associated to graphs, with unitary irreps and lowest SU(2) spins, and apply it to the Lorentzian EPRL-KKL (Engle, Pereira, Rovelli, Livine; Kaminski, Kieselowski, Lewandowski) model of quantum gravity. We reproduce the known asymptotics of the 4-simplex graph with a different perspective on the geometric variables and introduce an algorithm valid for any graph. On general grounds, we find that critical configurations are not just Regge geometries, but a larger set corresponding to conformal twisted geometries. These can be either Euclidean or Lorentzian, and include curved and flat 4d polytopes as subsets. For modular graphs, we show that multiple pairs of critical points exist, and there exist critical configurations of mixed signature, Euclidean and Lorentzian in different subgraphs, with no 4d embedding possible.

Authors: Andrea Calcinari, Laurent Freidel, Etera Livine and Simone Speziale
Year: 2020

We introduce a new family of coherent states for loop quantum gravity, inspired by the twisted geometry parametrization. We compute their peakedness properties and compare them with the heat-kernel coherent states. They show similar features for the area and the holonomy operators, but improved peakedness in the direction of the flux. At the gauge-invariant level, the new family is built from tensor products of coherent intertwiners. To study the peakedness of the holonomy operator, we introduce a new shift operator based on the harmonic oscillator representation associated with the twisted geometry parametrization. The new shift operator captures the components of the holonomy relevant to disentangle its action into a simple positive shift of the spins.

Authors: Pietro Dona, Marco Fanizza, Pierre Martin-Dussaud and Simone Speziale
Year: 2019

We study the semiclassical limit of a class of invariant tensors for infinite-dimensional unitary representations of SL(2,C) of the principal series, corresponding to generalized Clebsch-Gordan coefficients with n≥3 legs. We find critical configurations of the quantum labels with a power-law decay of the invariants. They describe 3d polygons that can be deformed into one another via a Lorentz transformation. This is defined viewing the edge vectors of the polygons are the electric part of bivectors satisfying a (frame-dependent) relation between their electric and magnetic parts known as γ-simplicity in the loop quantum gravity literature. The frame depends on the SU(2) spin labelling the basis elements of the invariants. We compute a saddle point approximation using the critical points and provide a leading-order approximation of the invariants. The power-law is universal if the SU(2) spins have their lowest value, and n-dependent otherwise. As a side result, we provide a compact formula for γ-simplicity in arbitrary frames. The results have applications to the current EPRL model, but also to future research aiming at going beyond the use of fixed time gauge in spin foam models.

Authors: Carlo Rovelli
Year: 2020

Physical systems may couple to other systems through variables that are not gauge invariant. When we split a gauge system into two subsystems, the gauge-invariant variables of the two subsystems have less information than the gauge invariant variables of the original system; the missing information regards degrees of freedom that express relations between the subsystems. All this shows that gauge invariance is a formalization of the relational nature of physical degrees of freedom. The recent developments on boundary variables and boundary charges are clarified by this observation.

Authors: Johannes Münch
Year: 2021

The causal structure of the recent loop quantum gravity black hole collapse model [1] is analysed. As the spacetime is only approximately diffeomorphism invariant up to powers of ℏ, it is not straight forwardly possible to find global conformally compactified coordinates and to construct the Penrose diagram. Therefore, radial in- and outgoing light rays are studied to extract the causal features and sketch a causal diagram. It was found that the eternal metric [2], which is the vacuum solution of the collapse model, has a causal horizon. However, in the collapsing case light rays travel through matter to causally connect the regions in- and outside the horizon — the causal horizon is not present in the collapsing scenario. It is worked out that this is related to the shock wave and spacetime discontinuity, which allows matter travelling super-luminal along a space-like trajectory from the vacuum point of view, but remaining time-like from the matter perspective. The final causal diagram is a nice compact patch of a Reissner-Nordström causal diagram. Further, possibilities of a continuous matter collapse with only time-like evolution are studied. It was found that the time-reversed vacuum metric is also a solution of the dynamical equations and a once continuously differentiable matching of the vacuum spacetime across the minimal radius is possible. This allows an everywhere continuous and time-like collapse process at the cost of an infinite extended causal diagram. This solution is part of an infinitely extended eternal black hole solution with a bounce, whose global extension is constructed. Due to the analysis of radial light rays, it is possible to sketch causal diagrams of these spacetimes.

Authors: Carlo Rovelli
Year: 2021

A number of thorny issues such as the nature of time, free will, the clash of the manifest and scientific images, the possibility of a naturalistic foundation of morality, and perhaps even the possibility of accounting for consciousness in naturalistic terms, seem to me to be plagued by the conceptual confusion nourished by a single fallacy: the old fisherman’s mistake.

Authors: Carlo Rovelli
Year: 2021

According to Bohmian mechanics, we see the particle, not the pilot wave. But to make predictions we need to know the wave. How do we learn about the wave to make predictions, if we only see the particle? I show that the puzzle can be solved, but only thanks to decoherence.