SeminarUpcomingTheoretical Physics

Emergent time and more from wavefunction collapse in general relativity

Thursday, September 24, 2026
14:30 America/Toronto
Sung-Sik Lee

McMaster University

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Hosted by Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics90 minutes

Abstract

This talk is about the proposal that (1) quantum states that violate the momentum and Hamiltonian constraints represent instances of time, and (2) time evolution corresponds to the gradual collapse of an initial state toward a diffeomorphism-invariant state, driven by stochastic fluctuations of the lapse and shift. During the wavefunction collapse, the scale factor increases monotonically and thus acts as a clock. Scalar, vector, and tensor gravitons arise as physical excitations. In the long-time limit, the tensor gravitons exhibit emergent unitary dynamics, while the extra modes are damped by the non-unitary dynamics that suppress constraint-violating excitations. I will also comment on possible physical implications of these extra graviton modes.

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