English

The closure constraint for the hyperbolic tetrahedron as a Bianchi identity

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2017-06-28 v1 Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

The closure constraint is a central piece of the mathematics of loop quantum gravity. It encodes the gauge invariance of the spin network states of quantum geometry and provides them with a geometrical interpretation: each decorated vertex of a spin network is dual to a quantized polyhedron in R3\mathbb{R}^{3}. For instance, a 4-valent vertex is interpreted as a tetrahedron determined by the four normal vectors of its faces. We develop a framework where the closure constraint is re-interpreted as a Bianchi identity, with the normals defined as holonomies around the polyhedron faces of a connection (constructed from the spinning geometry interpretation of twisted geometries). This allows us to define closure constraints for hyperbolic tetrahedra (living in the 3-hyperboloid of unit future-oriented spacelike vectors in R3,1\mathbb{R}^{3,1}) in terms of normals living all in SU(2)SU(2) or in SB(2,C)SB(2,\mathbb{C}). The latter fits perfectly with the classical phase space developed for qq-deformed loop quantum gravity supposed to account for a non-vanishing cosmological constant Λ>0\Lambda>0. This is the first step towards interpreting qq-deformed twisted geometries as actual discrete hyperbolic triangulations.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.1607.08359,
  title  = {The closure constraint for the hyperbolic tetrahedron as a Bianchi identity},
  author = {Christoph Charles and Etera R. Livine},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1607.08359},
  year   = {2017}
}

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31 pages