Related papers: Exotic Smoothness and Quantum Gravity
Since the advent of new pairwise non-diffeomorphic structures on smooth manifolds, it has been questioned whether two topologically identical manifolds could admit different geometries. Not surprisingly, physicists have wondered whether a…
Exotic smooth manifolds, ${\bf R^2\times_\Theta S^2}$, are constructed and discussed as possible space-time models supporting the usual Kruskal presentation of the vacuum Schwarzschild metric locally, but {\em not globally}. While having…
We show that many explicit examples of exotic pairs of surfaces in a smooth 4-manifold become smoothly isotopic after one external stabilization with $S^2\times S^2$ or $CP^2\#\overline{CP^2}$. Our results cover surfaces produced by…
In this paper, we study stable equivalence of exotically knotted surfaces in 4-manifolds, surfaces that are topologically isotopic but not smoothly isotopic. We prove that any pair of embedded surfaces in the same homology class become…
The essential role played by differentiable structures in physics is reviewed in light of recent mathematical discoveries that topologically trivial space-time models, especially the simplest one, ${\bf R^4}$, possess a rich multiplicity of…
This thesis is driven by a central question: "What can we learn from random geometries about the structure of quantum spacetime?" In Chapter 2, we provide a partial review of the mathematical foundation of this thesis, random geometry. In…
4-manifolds have special topological properties which can be used to get a different view on quantum mechanics. One important property (connected with exotic smoothness) is the natural appearance of 3-manifold wild embeddings (Alexanders…
We construct the first exotic $\mathbb C \mathbb P^2 \# 4 \overline{\mathbb C \mathbb P^2}$ by means of rational blowdowns. Similarly, we construct the first exotic $3\mathbb C \mathbb P^2 \# b^- \overline{\mathbb C \mathbb P^2}$ for…
The higher-spin geometries of $W_\infty$-gravity and $W_N$-gravity are analysed and used to derive the complete non-linear structure of the coupling to matter and its symmetries. The symmetry group is a subgroup of the symplectic…
I hesitated for a long time before giving shape to these notes, originally intended for preliminary reading by the attendees to the Summer School "New paths towards quantum gravity" (Holbaek Bay, Denmark, May 2008). At the end, I decide…
Over the last three years, a number of fundamental physical issues were addressed in loop quantum gravity. These include: A statistical mechanical derivation of the horizon entropy, encompassing astrophysically interesting black holes as…
The building blocks of a quantum theory of general relativity are expected to be discrete structures. Loop quantum gravity is formulated using a basis of spin networks (wave functions over oriented graphs with coloured edges), thus…
The importance of quantum effects for exotic nuclear shapes is demonstrated. Based on the example of a sheet of nuclear matter of infinite lateral dimensions but finite thickness, it is shown that the quantization of states in momentum…
Using spinning we analyze in a geometric way Haefliger's smoothly knotted (4k-1)-spheres in the 6k-sphere. Consider the 2-torus standardly embedded in the 3-sphere, which is further standardly embedded in the 6-sphere. At each point of the…
We introduce a new generalization of Gompf nuclei and give applications. We construct infinitely many exotic smooth structures for a large class of compact 4-manifolds with boundary, regarding topological invariants. We prove that a large…
We study smooth, proper embeddings of noncompact surfaces in 4-manifolds, focusing on exotic planes and annuli, i.e., embeddings pairwise homeomorphic to the standard embeddings of R^2 and R^2-int D^2 in R^4. We encounter two uncountable…
Some results of author's work in a non-geometrical approach to quantum gravity are reviewed here, among them: a quantum mechanism of classical gravity giving a possibility to compute the Newton constant; asymptotic freedom at short…
We extend a construction of Stipsicz-Szab\'{o} of infinitely many irreducible exotic smooth structures of some closed four-manifolds with even $b_2^+$ and fundamental group $\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}$. We use the double node surgery and…
In canonical quantum gravity, when space is a compact manifold with boundary there is a Hamiltonian given by an integral over the boundary. Here we compute the action of this `boundary Hamiltonian' on observables corresponding to open…
We study K\"{a}hler gravity on local SU(N) geometry and describe precise correspondence with certain supersymmetric gauge theories and random plane partitions. The local geometry is discretized, via the geometric quantization, to a foam of…