Padmanabhan, T.2012-03-012012-03-011984-08-14http://hdl.handle.net/11007/50The significance of Planck length in a quantum gravity model is investigated by concentrating on the conformal degree of freedom. It is shown that Planck length is a lower bound to physical proper length in any space-time. It is impossible to construct an apparatus which will measure length scales smaller than Planck length. These effects exist even in flat space-time because of vacuum fluctuations of gravity. It is shown that these fluctuations lead to a high energy cut-off in flat space field theories, thereby removing the divergence problem. The oneloop corrections to a self interacting scalar field is computed and shown to be finite.enPhysical significancePlanck lengthQuantum gravityArticle