Gravitational collapse in quantum gravity

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances in quantum gravity models of gravitational collapse, focusing on a non-perturbative framework that captures the emergence of semi-classical phenomena like Hawking radiation without singularities.

Contribution

It introduces a quantization of gravity-scalar field theory in spherical symmetry enabling singularity-free, unitary evolution of collapsing matter and geometry.

Findings

Operators for null expansions and curvature are well-defined.

The framework allows tracking evolution beyond trapped surfaces.

The model supports a non-singular, unitary description of collapse.

Abstract

We give a review of recent work aimed at understanding the dynamics of gravitational collapse in quantum gravity. Its goal is to provide a non-perturbative computational framework for understanding the emergence of the semi-classical approximation and Hawking radiation. The model studied is the gravity-scalar field theory in spherical symmetry. A quantization of this theory is given in which operators corresponding to null expansions and curvature are well defined. Together with the Hamiltonian, these operators allow one to follow the evolution of an initial matter-geometry state to a trapped configuration and beyond, in a singularity free and unitary setting.