Non-commutative Geometry from Perturbative Quantum Gravity in de Sitter spacetime

Abstract: We show that a non-commutative structure arises naturally from perturbative quantum gravity in a de Sitter background metric. Our work builds on recent advances in the construction of observables in highly symmetric background spacetimes [Brunetti et al., JHEP 08, 032 (2016); Fr\"ob and Lima, Class. Quant. Grav. 35, 095010 (2018)], where the dynamical coordinates that are needed in the relational approach were established for such backgrounds to all orders in perturbation theory. We show that these dynamical coordinates that describe events in the perturbed spacetime are naturally non-commuting, and determine their commutator to leading order in the Planck length. Our result generalizes the causal non-commutative structure that was found using the same approach in Minkowski space [Fr\"ob, Much and Papadopoulos, Phys. Rev. D 107, 064041 (2023)].