Interplay between curvature and Planck-scale effects in astrophysics and cosmology

Understand

Several recent studies have considered the implications for astrophysics and cosmology of some possible nonclassical properties of spacetime at the Planck scale.

• The new effects, such as a Planck-scale-modified energy-momentum (dispersion) relation, are often inferred from the analysis of some quantum versions of Minkowski spacetime, and therefore the relevant estimates depend heavily on the assumption that there could not be significant interplay between Planck-scale and curvature effects.
• We here scrutinize this assumption, using as guidance a quantum version of de Sitter spacetime with known Inonu-Wigner contraction to a quantum Minkowski spacetime.
• And we show that, contrary to common (but unsupported) beliefs, the interplay between Planck-scale and curvature effects can be significant.