The role of Background Independence for Asymptotic Safety in Quantum Einstein Gravity

TL;DR

This paper explores how background independence influences the renormalization group flows in quantum gravity, emphasizing its crucial role in achieving asymptotic safety and renormalizability in Quantum Einstein Gravity.

Contribution

It demonstrates that background independence fundamentally alters RG flows and is essential for the existence of a non-Gaussian fixed point in QEG.

Findings

Background independence leads to distinct RG flows.

It is a key prerequisite for asymptotic safety in QEG.

Supports the renormalizability of Quantum Einstein Gravity.

Abstract

We discuss various basic conceptual issues related to coarse graining flows in quantum gravity. In particular the requirement of background independence is shown to lead to renormalization group (RG) flows which are significantly different from their analogs on a rigid background spacetime. The importance of these findings for the asymptotic safety approach to Quantum Einstein Gravity (QEG) is demonstrated in a simplified setting where only the conformal factor is quantized. We identify background independence as a (the ?) key prerequisite for the existence of a non-Gaussian RG fixed point and the renormalizability of QEG.