English

A note on the spinor construction of Spin Foam amplitudes

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2015-06-18 v2

Abstract

I discuss the use of spinors in the construction of spin-foam models, in particular the form of the closure and simplicity constraints for triangles that are space-like, i.e. with (area)2=\halfSIJSIJ>0^2=\half S^{IJ}S_{IJ}>0, regardless of whether they belong the tetrahedra with a space-like or time-like normal, emphasizing the role of the light-like 4-vector utσIuˉtu_t\sigma^I\bar u_t. In the quantization of the model, with the representations of SL(2,C\mathbb{C}) acting on spaces of functions of light-like vectors, one may use the canonical basis of SU(2) representations, or the pseudobasis limited to the discrete representations of SU(1,1); in alternative it is proposed to use instead a basis of eigenstates of (L3,K3)(L_3,K_3), which might give matrix elements and vertex functions with the same classical limit. A detailed example of a small triangulation is presented, which among other things indicates, on the basis of a classical calculation, that it would be impractical to limit oneself to tetrahedra with time-like normals.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1311.6942,
  title  = {A note on the spinor construction of Spin Foam amplitudes},
  author = {Giorgio Immirzi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1311.6942},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

20 pages, 1 figure; in v.2 typos corrected, presentation improved, referee comments accepted