Title: Quantum Gravity Signals in 4D Einstein gravity from 2D JT gravity

Abstract: It is generally believed that quantum gravity fluctuations in a vacuum are immeasurably small from an effective field theory (EFT) perspective, as their size is suppressed by powers of the Planck mass. In this talk, we study quantum fluctuations in the lightcone metric of the 4-d Einstein-Hilbert action via dimensional reduction to Jackiw-Teitelboim (JT) gravity. In particular, we show that, in Einstein gravity, the causal development of a region in flat Minkowski spacetime, near a horizon defined by light sheets, can be described by an effective two-dimensional dilaton theory. This enables us to make use of known solutions of the JT action, where the spacetime position of a horizon has quantum uncertainty due to metric fluctuations. This quantum uncertainty can be then directly related to the original 4-d light cone coordinates, allowing us to compute the uncertainty in the time of a photon to travel from tip-to-tip of a causal diamond in flat 4-d Minkowski space. We find that both Planck and infrared scales (with the latter set by the size of the causal diamond) enter the uncertainty in photon travel time, such that the quantum fluctuation in the arrival time may be observably large, larger than one would expect from an EFT calculation.

https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/94928022788?pwd=emVQWG1mTnhSbHVqekVuenk0VEVQZz09