Related papers: Extended matter coupled to BF theory
Four dimensional BF theory admits a natural coupling to extended sources supported on two dimensional surfaces or string world-sheets. Solutions of the theory are in one to one correspondence with solutions of Einstein equations with…
The most general gauge-invariant marginal deformation of four-dimensional abelian BF-type topological field theory is studied. It is shown that the deformed quantum field theory is topological and that its observables compute, in addition…
BF theory is a topological theory that can be seen as a natural generalization of 3-dimensional gravity to arbitrary dimensions. Here we show that the coupling to point particles that is natural in three dimensions generalizes in a direct…
We propose a formulation of gravity theory in the form of a field theory in a flat space-time with a number of dimensions greater than four. Configurations of the field under consideration describe the splitting of this space-time into a…
We investigate a formulation of continuum 4d gravity in terms of a constrained topological (BF) theory, in the spirit of the Plebanski formulation, but involving only linear constraints, of the type used recently in the spin foam approach…
This paper presents the extension from flat spacetime into curved spacetime of the area of theoretical investigation that has been known as topological gauge field theory. The extension here presented is based upon a new derivation of the…
We consider BF-type topological field theory coupled to non-dynamical particle and string sources on spacetime manifolds of the form $\IR^1\times\MT$, where $\MT$ is a 3-manifold without boundary. Canonical quantization of the theory is…
We construct a topological field theory which, on the one hand, generalizes BF theories in that there is non-trivial coupling to `topological matter fields'; and, on the other, generalizes the three-dimensional model of Carlip and Gegenberg…
We study relativistic particle, string and membrane theories as defining field theories containing gravity in (0+1), (1+1) and (2+1) spacetime dimensions respectively. We show how an off shell invariance of the massless particle action…
We consider a deformation of the BF theory in any dimension by means of the antifield BRST formalism. Possible consistent interaction terms for the action and the gauge symmetries are analyzed and we find a new class of topological gauge…
The problem of constructing a quantum theory of gravity has been tackled with very different strategies, most of which relying on the interplay between ideas from physics and from advanced mathematics. On the mathematical side, a central…
We investigate a formulation of continuum 4d gravity in terms of a constrained BF theory, in the spirit of the Plebanski formulation, but involving only linear constraints, of the type used recently in the spin foam approach to quantum…
The local and manifestly covariant Lagrangian interactions in four spacetime dimensions that can be added to a ``free'' model that describes a generic matter theory and an abelian BF theory are constructed by means of deforming the solution…
Starting from a given topological invariant, we argue that it is possible to construct a topological field theory with a finite number of Feynman diagrams and an amplitude of gauge invariant objects that is a function of that invariant.…
Topological models involving matter couplings to Donaldson-Witten theory are presented. The construction is carried using both, the topological algebra and its central extension, which arise from the twisting of $N=2$ supersymmetry in four…
We show that $4$-dimensional Robertson-Walker spacetimes can be constructed for which all of the beta functions vanish to leading order, yielding consistent string theory without extra dimensions. We find that there is a unique static…
It is known that the Einstein-Hilbert action with a positive cosmological constant can be represented as a perturbation of the SO(4,1) BF theory by a symmetry-breaking term quadratic in the B field. Introducing fermionic matter generates…
This is a set of lectures on the gauge/string duality and non-critical strings, with a particular emphasis on the discretized, or matrix model, approach. After a general discussion of various points of view, I describe the recent…
We study gravity coupled to scalar and fermion fields in the Einstein-Cartan framework. We discuss the most general form of the action that contains terms of mass dimension not bigger than four, leaving out only contributions quadratic in…
The supersymmetric version of a topological quantum field theory describing flat connections, the super BF-theory, is studied in the superspace formalism. A set of observables related to topological invariants is derived from the curvature…