Einstein's approach to Quantum Gravity - a podcast by MCMP Team

Dennis Lehmkuhl (Wuppertal) gives a talk at the MCMP workshop "Quantum Gravity in Perspective" (31 May-1 June, 2013) titled "Einstein's approach to Quantum Gravity". Abstract: It is common knowledge that despite being a pioneer of the early quantum theory, Einstein opposed the probabilistic interpretation of the new quantum mechanics of 1925 / 1926, and he would have opposed any approach of a quantization of gravity relying on this interpretation. What is less well-known is that Einstein had an alternative approach that bears some similarities to more recent ideas to general relativize quantum mechancis rather than quantizing general relativity. Einstein identified discreteness in nature with quantum theory: the existence of photons, the quantisation of electric charge, etc. Roughly speaking, his idea was that these quantum features of reality could be derived from a generally covariant field theory of gravitation and electromagnetism by finding overdetermined partial differential equations which allow for solutions capable of represtenting quantum particles. If this were to be achieved, the groundfloor ontology of the world would have turned out to be one of classical fields described by generally covariant partial differential field equations, while the quantum would only enter on the level of the solutions to these equations. The talk reviews the above research programme of Einsteins, and reflects on whether it can lend some inspiration to modern quantum gravity research.

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