CHAPTER 21: Quantum Mechanics at the Planck Scale
Talk given at the Workshop on Physics at the Planck Scale, Puri, India, December 12–21, 1994. This talk is a précis of the author’s 1992 Les Houches Lectures Spacetime Quantum Mechanics and the Quantum Mechanics of Spacetime.
Usual quantum mechanics requires a fixed, background, spacetime geometry and its associated causal structure. A generalization of the usual theory may therefore be needed at the Planck scale for quantum theories of gravity in which spacetime geometry is a quantum variable. The elements of generalized quantum theory are briefly reviewed and illustrated by generalizations of usual quantum theory that incorporate spacetime alternatives, gauge degrees of freedom, and histories that move forward and backward in time. A generalized quantum framework for cosmological spacetime geometry is sketched. This theory is in fully four-dimensional form and free from the need for a fixed causal structure. Usual quantum mechanics is recovered as an approximation to this more general framework that is appropriate in those situations where spacetime geometry behaves classically.
