Recent content by Harv

Ding Ding!

As discovered long ago, this naïve perturbative approach to obtaining a quantum theory of gravity that reduces to General Relativity in the low-energy limit by simply quantizing the linearized gravitational field doesn`t work because General Relativity cannot be fully understood as just a theory...

I don`t know whether you`re doing this intentionally, but not to qualify this sort of thread by specifying non-string quantum gravity papers may mislead less knowledgeable members, or perhaps your one of them and didn`t understand this. Either way, I hope you`ll take care not to repeat this...

But for many reasons, the leading program by far is still string theory.

Why the interest?

I looked at Polchinski's paper and understand now why you're right. Thanks.

But we can't verify the coupling of gravity directly to the individual loops involved in these quantum contributions.

Does anyone here doubt that quantum vacuum energy exists?

The number of propagating degrees of freedom are determined by the equation of motion (5.18).