Nontrivial topological structures of spacetime and implications for particle propagation

Abstract

Spacetime foam, which describes the quantum fluctuations of spacetime, is one of the possible characteristics of a quantum theory of gravity. One of the many approaches to spacetime foam consists in equipping spacetime with a distribution of microscopic structures with nontrivial topology. In this thesis, we follow this approach considering various scenario in order to investigate different aspects of spacetime foam.