Bringing Together Gravity and the Quanta

TL;DR

This paper discusses how teleparallel gravity, with its gauge structure, offers a way to describe gravity tensorially and may bridge the conceptual gap between general relativity and quantum mechanics.

Contribution

It highlights the potential of teleparallel gravity to reconcile gravitation with quantum principles by separating inertial and gravitational effects without relying on the equivalence principle.

Findings

Teleparallel gravity provides a tensorial energy-momentum density for gravity.

It allows description of gravity without the equivalence principle.

Potential for unifying gravity with quantum mechanics through its gauge structure.

Abstract

Due to its underlying gauge structure, teleparallel gravity achieves a separation between inertial and gravitational effects. It can, in consequence, describe the isolated gravitational interaction without resorting to the equivalence principle, and is able to provide a tensorial definition for the energy-momentum density of the gravitational field. Considering the conceptual conflict between the local equivalence principle and the nonlocal uncertainty principle, the replacement of general relativity by its teleparallel equivalent can be considered an important step towards a prospective reconciliation between gravitation and quantum mechanics.