Gravity from a Modified Commutator

Abstract

We show that a suitably chosen position-momentum commutator can elegantly describe many features of gravity, including the IR/UV correspondence and dimensional reduction (`holography'). Using the most simplistic example based on dimensional analysis of black holes, we construct a commutator which qualitatively exhibits these novel properties of gravity. Dimensional reduction occurs because the quanta size grow quickly with momenta, and thus cannot be "packed together" as densely as naively expected. We conjecture that a more precise form of this commutator should be able to quantitatively reproduce all of these features.

8 pages; Honorable Mention in the 2005 Gravity Research Foundation Essay Competition; v2: acknowledgments added