What If There Is Quantum Memory in Spacetime
In modern physics, spacetime is thought of as the stage on which physical events occur.
The hypothesis being put forth here takes a different view: spacetime itself might not just be a stage, but a quantum memory of its causal history.
The degree of freedom in question is named the Causal Memory Field.
The model posits that geometry, entanglement, and information storage are all facets of the same entity.
Here are three predicted results:
Black hole information paradox: The information is not lost in an irreversible fashion when it falls through the horizon. Rather, it is stored in nonlocal ways through gravitational, boundary, and entanglement degrees of freedom, resembling quantum error correction.
Dark energy-like equation of state: In its late-time configuration, the stress-energy of the memory field behaves like a material component with equation of state w = −1 and hence causes accelerated expansion.
Emergence of geometry: There might be no fundamental gravitation at all; the geometry of spacetime might emerge from the information stored in it. I am not claiming any solutions to the problem of quantum gravity.
Instead, I offer a mathematical toy model that poses a well-defined question: Is it possible to build a causal quantum memory system that will retain information, respect relativistic locality principle, and give rise to Einstein's gravity in some limit?
If so, what would follow? If not, where does the mathematics break down? This is the challenge I make to the physics community: try to mathematically falsify the hypothesis.