ABSTRACT

Should Einstein’s general relativity be quantized in the usual way even though it is not renormalizable the way the spin 1/2 lepto-quark – spin 1 gauge force boson local field theories are? Condensed matter theorists using P.W. Anderson’s “More is different” approach, consistent with Andrei Sakharov’s idea of “metric elasticity” with gravity emergent out of quantum electrodynamic zero point vacuum fluctuations, is the approach I take in this paper.

The QED vacuum in globally-flat Minkowski space-time is unstable due to exchange of virtual photons between virtual electrons and positron “holes” near the –mc2 Fermi surface well inside the 2mc2 energy gap. This results in a non-perturbative emergence of both Einstein’s gravity and a unified dark energy/dark matter w = -1 exotic vacuum zero point fluctuation field controlled by the local macro-quantum vacuum coherent field. The latter is a Bose-Einstein condensate of virtual off-mass-shell bound electron-positron pairs. The dark matter exotic vacuum phase with positive pressure does mimic w ~ 0 “cold dark matter” for distant observers even though its internal structure is w = -1. Old problems in elementary particles are also seen in a new light in terms of Ed Witten’s reciprocal string tension parameter a.