Finitary, Causal, and Quantal Vacuum Einstein Gravity

We continue recent work (Mallios and Raptis, International Journal of Theoretical Physics40, 1885, 2001; in press) and formulate the gravitational vacuum Einstein equations over a locally finite space-time by using the basic axiomatics, techniques, ideas, and working philosophy of Abstract Differential Geometry. The main kinematical structure involved, originally introduced and explored in (Mallios and Raptis, International Journal of Theoretical Physics40, 1885, 2001), is a curved principal finitary space-time sheaf of incidence algebras, which have been interpreted as quantum causal sets, together with a nontrivial locally finite spin-Loretzian connection on it which lays the structural foundation for the formulation of a covariant dynamics of quantum causality in terms of sheaf morphisms. Our scheme is innately algebraic and it supports a categorical version of the principle of general covariance that is manifestly independent of a background -smooth space-time manifold M. Thus, we entertain the possibility of developing a fully covariant path integral-type of quantum dynamical scenario for these connections that avoids ab initio various problems that such a dynamics encounters in other current quantization schemes for gravity—either canonical (Hamiltonian) or covariant (Lagrangian)—involving an external, base differential space-time manifold, namely, the choice of a diffeomorphism-invariant measure on the moduli space of gauge-equivalent (self-dual) gravitational spin-Lorentzian connections and the (Hilbert space) inner product that could in principle be constructed relative to that measure in the quantum theory—the so-called inner product problem, as well as the problem of time that also involves the Diff(M) structure group of the classical -smooth space-time continuum of general relativity. Hence, by using the inherently algebraico—sheaf—theoretic and calculus-free ideas of Abstract Differential Geometry, we are able to draw preliminary, albeit suggestive, connections between certain nonperturbative (canonical or covariant) approaches to quantum general relativity (e.g., Ashtekar's new variables and the loop formalism that has been developed along with them) and Sorkin et al.'s causal set program. As it were, we noncommutatively algebraize, differential geometrize and, as a result, dynamically vary causal sets. At the end, we anticipate various consequences that such a scenario for a locally finite, causal and quantal vacuum Einstein gravity might have for the obstinate (from the viewpoint of the smooth continuum) problem of -smooth space-time singularities.