Related papers: Classical general relativity as BF-Plebanski theor…
The inclusion of a flat metric tensor in gravitation permits the formulation of a gravitational stress-energy tensor and the formal derivation of general relativity from a linear theory in flat spacetime. Building on the works of Kraichnan…
We study the canonical structure of the real first order formulation of general relativity on a null foliation. We use a tetrad decomposition which allows to elegantly encode the nature of the foliation in the norm of a vector in the fibre…
We study the discretization of a Poincar\'e/Euclidean BF theory. Upon the addition of a boundary term, this theory is equivalent to the BFCG theory defined in terms of the Poincar\'e/Euclidean 2-group. At an intermediate step in the…
The paper studies different observational features in the case of a specific cubic gravity theory, based on third order contractions of the Riemann tensor. Considering viable cosmic chronometers data, baryon acoustic oscillations, and…
We define a four-dimensional spin-foam perturbation theory for the ${\rm BF}$-theory with a $B\wedge B$ potential term defined for a compact semi-simple Lie group $G$ on a compact orientable 4-manifold $M$. This is done by using the formal…
We discuss two aspects of f(R) theories of gravity in metric formalism. We first study the reasons to introduce a scalar-tensor representation for these theories and the behavior of this representation in the limit to General Relativity,…
Spin foams of 4d gravity were recently extended from complexes with purely spacelike surfaces to complexes that also contain timelike surfaces. In this article, we express the associated partition function in terms of vertex amplitudes and…
We give a general definition of spin foam models, and then of models of 4d quantum gravity based on constraining BF theory. We highlight the construction and quantization ambiguities entering model building, among which the choice of…
It is argued that some approaches to non-perturbative quantum general relativity lack a sensible continuum limit that reproduces general relativity. The basic problem is that generic physical states lack long ranged correlations, because…
We derive Friedman-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) models as non-trivial solutions of "Cotton Gravity" (CG), a recently proposed gravity theory alternative to General Relativity (GR) based on the Cotton tensor. Using an equivalent…
Group Field Theories, a generalization of matrix models for 2d gravity, represent a 2nd quantization of both loop quantum gravity and simplicial quantum gravity. In this paper, we construct a new class of Group Field Theory models, for any…
In this paper we build the general formalism of gravitational lensing in luminal Horndeski theories, deriving the Jacobi matrix equation and the general angular diameter distance in these theories through the screen space formalism. We…
New corrections to General Relativity are considered in the context of modified $f(R)$ gravity, that satisfy cosmological and local gravity constraints. The proposed models behave asymptotically as $R-2\Lambda$ at large curvature and show…
I present a model of discrete gravity, which is formulated in terms of a topological gauge theory with defects. The theory has no local degrees of freedom and the gravitational field is trivial everywhere except at a number of colliding…
We present a unified framework that combines early- and late-Universe observations to constrain three functional realizations of f(T,B) gravity: the linear, quadratic, and general power-law models. First, constraints on deviations from the…
We develop the general formalism for performing perturbative diagrammatic expansions in the lattice theory of quantum gravity. The results help establish a precise correspondence between continuum and lattice quantities, and should be a…
We consider 3-dimensional Euclidean gravity in the weak coupling limit of Smolin and show that it is BF-theory with $\text{U(1)}^3$ as a Lie group. The theory is quantised using loop quantum gravity methods. The kinematical degrees of…
Quasi-topological theories of gravity are known to resolve black-hole singularities. We investigate whether the same mechanism can remove cosmological singularities. Focusing on non-polynomial curvature quasi-topological gravities in $d=4$…
We recently introduced a new representation for loop quantum gravity, which is based on the BF vacuum and is in this sense much nearer to the spirit of spin foam dynamics. In the present paper we lay out the classical framework underlying…
We construct a group field theory model for quantum gravity minimally coupled to relativistic scalar fields, defining as well a corresponding discrete gravity path integral (and, implicitly, a coupled spin foam model) in its Feynman…