English

Quantum Gravity in 2+1 Dimensions

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2023-12-21 v1 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

General relativity becomes vastly simpler in three spacetime dimensions: all vacuum solutions have constant curvature, and the moduli space of solutions can be almost completely characterized. As a result, this lower dimensional setting becomes an ideal test bed for a wide range of approaches to quantum gravity, from reduced phase phase space quantization to covariant canonical quantization to path integral methods to asymptotic quantization of "edge states." Here I review a variety of classical descriptions of the moduli space of solutions and a broad range of quantizations, with special attention to implications for realistic quantum gravity in four spacetime dimensions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2312.12596,
  title  = {Quantum Gravity in 2+1 Dimensions},
  author = {S. Carlip},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2312.12596},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

27 pages; invited contribution to the 2nd edition of the Encyclopedia of Mathematical Physics

R2 v1 2026-06-28T13:56:52.520Z