Generalizing Quantum Mechanics for Quantum Spacetime

Familiar textbook quantum mechanics assumes a fixed background spacetime to define states on spacelike surfaces and their unitary evolution between them. Quantum theory has changed as our conceptions of space and time have evolved. But quantum mechanics needs to be generalized further for quantum gravity where spacetime geometry is fluctuating and without definite value. This paper reviews a fully four-dimensional, sum-over-histories, generalized quantum mechanics of cosmological spacetime geometry. This generalization is constructed within the framework of generalized quantum theory. This is a minimal set of principles for quantum theory abstracted from the modern quantum mechanics of closed systems, most generally the universe. In this generalization, states of fields on spacelike surfaces and their unitary evolution are emergent properties appropriate when spacetime geometry behaves approximately classically. The principles of generalized quantum theory allow for the further generalization that would be necessary were spacetime not fundamental. Emergent spacetime phenomena are discussed in general and illustrated with the example of the classical spacetime geometries with large spacelike surfaces that emerge from the ‘no-boundary’ wave function of the universe. These must be Lorentzian with one, and only one, time direction. The essay concludes by raising the question of whether quantum mechanics itself is emergent. To appear in the proceedings of the 23 Solvay Conference, The Quantum Structure of Space and Time, 12/1–3/05, Brussels