Abstract
Einstein’s General Relativity Theory (GRT) was originally formulated as a classical field theory, and the question if it can or even must be quantized is one of the fundamental questions which has not been finally answered until now. The consideration of this problem is not so much justified by formal analogies between electromagnetic and gravitational theories, and even less by metaphysical belief in the quantrum structure of nature, but by the fact that matter fields must be quantized. This means that the character of the coupling between quantized matter and gravity must be clarified. The main aspect of the problem is whether this requires gravity to be quantized too. If one refers to Einstein’s GRT, the problem is now to understand Einstein’s equations
(where κ = 8πG/c 4) in the case of quantized matter, i.e., in the case where the energy—momentum tensor T μν describes quantized matter.
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© 1988 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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von Borzeszkowski, HH., Treder, HJ. (1988). Quantum Theory and Gravitation. In: The Meaning of Quantum Gravity. Fundamental Theories of Physics, vol 20. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3893-9_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3893-9_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-8229-7
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-3893-9
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