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It is expected that the quantum nature of spacetime leaves its imprint in all semiclassical gravitational systems, at least in certain regimes, including gravitational waves. In this paper we investigate such imprints on gravitational waves within a specific framework: space is assumed to be discrete (in the form of a regular cubic lattice), and this discrete geometry is quantised following Dirac’s canonical quantisation scheme. The semiclassical behavior is then extracted by promoting the expectation value of the Hamiltonian operator on a semiclassical state to an effective Hamiltonian. Considering a family of semiclassical states representing small tensor perturbations to Minkowski background, we derive a quantum-corrected effective wave equation. The deviations from the classical gravitational wave equation are found to be encoded in a modified dispersion relation and controlled by the discreteness parameter of the underlying lattice. For finite discretisations, several interesting effects appear: we investigate the thermodynamical properties of these modified gravitons and, under certain assumptions, derive the tensor power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background. The latter is found to deviate from the classical prediction, in that an amplification of UV modes takes place. We discuss under what circumstances such effect can be in agreement with observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider a semiclassical description of the spherically symmetric gravitational collapse with a massless scalar field. In particular, we employ an effective scenario provided by holonomy corrections from loop quantum gravity (LQG), to the homogeneous interior spacetime. The singularity that would arise at the final stage of the corresponding classical collapse, is resolved in this context and is replaced by a bounce. Our main purpose is to investigate the evolution of trapped surfaces during this semiclassical collapse. Within this setting, we obtain a threshold radius for the collapsing shells in order to have horizons formation. In addition, we study the final state of the collapse by employing a suitable matching at the boundary shell from which quantum gravity effects are carried to the exterior geometry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]