Related papers: Topology change in causal quantum gravity
It is well-known that quantum groups are relevant to describe the quantum regime of 3d gravity. They encode a deformation of the gauge symmetries parametrized by the value of the cosmological constant. They appear as a form of…
A model of topological field theory is presented in which the vacuum coupling constants are topological invariants of the four-dimensional spacetime. Thus the coupling constants are theoretically computable, and they indicate the…
We consider two issues in the DT model of quantum gravity. First, it is shown that the triangulation space for D>3 is dominated by triangulations containing a single singular (D-3)-simplex composed of vertices with divergent dual volumes.…
Topological gravity (in the sense that it is metric-independent) in a $2n$-dimensional spacetime can be formulated as a gauge field theory for the AdS gauge group $SO(2,2n-1)$ by adding a multiplet of scalar fields. These scalars can break…
In this paper we lay the foundations of causal quantum gravity (CQG), i.e. of a quantum theory of self-interacting symmetric massless rank-2 tensor gauge fields, the gravitons, on flat space-time, in the framework of causal perturbation…
Some problems in finding a complete quantum theory incorporating gravity are discussed. One is that of giving a consistent unitary description of high-energy scattering. Another is that of giving a consistent quantum description of…
Asymptotic safety describes a scenario in which general relativity can be quantized as a conventional field theory, despite being nonrenormalizable when expanding it around a fixed background geometry. It is formulated in the framework of…
In the present paper we consider a theory of gravity in which not only curvature but also torsion is explicitly present in the Lagrangian, both with their own coupling constant. In particular, we discuss the couplings to Dirac fields and…
We study 2D quantum gravity on spherical topologies using the Regge calculus approach with the $dl/l$ measure. Instead of a fixed non-regular triangulation which has been used before, we study for each system size four different random…
We argue that theories of quantum gravity constructed with the help of (Causal) Dynamical Triangulations have given us the most informative, quantitative models to date of quantum spacetime. Most importantly, these are derived dynamically…
Motivated by string dualities we propose topological gravity as the early phase of our universe. The topological nature of this phase naturally leads to the explanation of many of the puzzles of early universe cosmology. A concrete…
Aspects of string cosmology for critical and non-critical strings are discussed emphasizing the necessity to account for the dilaton dynamics for a proper incorporation of ``large - small" duality. This drastically modifies the intuition…
We investigate the quantum Ricci curvature, which was introduced in earlier work, in full, four-dimensional quantum gravity, formulated nonperturbatively in terms of Causal Dynamical Triangulations (CDT). A key finding of the CDT approach…
In this paper, we examine the analogy between topological string theory and equivariant cohomology. We also show that the equivariant cohomology of a topological conformal field theory carries a certain algebraic structure, which we call a…
We discuss quadratic gravity where terms quadratic in the curvature tensor are included in the action. After reviewing the corresponding field equations, we analyze in detail the physical propagating modes in some specific backgrounds.…
We show that, in two-dimensional Euclidean quantum gravity without matter fields, the Schwinger-Dyson equations derived within the Hamiltonian framework of non-critical string field theory can be reformulated in terms of the…
In an on-shell conformal field theory approach, we find indications of a three-bracket structure for target space coordinates in general closed string backgrounds. This generalizes the appearance of noncommutative gauge theories for open…
We discuss a cluster-like 1D system with triplet interaction. We study the topological properties of this system. We find that the degeneracy depends on the topology of the system, and well protected against external local perturbations.…
The gravitational field of monopoles, cosmic strings and domain walls is studied in the quadratic gravitational theory $R+\alpha R^2$ with $\alpha |R|\ll 1$, and is compared with the result in Einstein's theory. The metric aquires…
We propose a phenomenological approach to the cosmological constant problem based on generally covariant non-local and acausal modifications of four-dimensional gravity at enormous distances. The effective Newton constant becomes very small…