Related papers: Classical GR as a topological theory with linear c…
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 use the approach to generate spin foam models by an auxiliary field theory defined on a group manifold (as recently developed in quantum gravity and quantization of BF-theories) in the context of topological quantum field theories with a…
Large-distance modification of gravity may be the mechanism for solving the cosmological constant problem. A simple model of the large-distance modification -- four-dimensional (4D) gravity with the hard mass term-- is problematic from the…
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…
A version of the cosmological perturbation theory in general relativity (GR) is developed, where the cosmological scale factor is identified with spatial averaging of the metric determinant logarithm and the cosmic evolution acquires the…
We review, in the light of recent developments, the existing relations between gravity and topological BF theories at the classical level. We include the Plebanski action in both self-dual and non-chiral formulations, their generalizations,…
In the context of f(R) theories of gravity, we study the cosmological evolution of scalar perturbations by using a completely general procedure. We find that the exact fourth-order differential equation for the matter density perturbations…
We investigate the quantum geometry of $2d$ surface $S$ bounding the Cauchy slices of 4d gravitational system. We investigate in detail and for the first time the symplectic current that naturally arises boundary term in the first order…
A lattice quantum gravity model in 4 dimensional Riemannian spacetime is constructed based on the SU(2) Ashtekar formulation of general relativity. This model can be understood as one of the family of models sometimes called ``spin foam…
Boulatov and Ooguri have generalized the matrix models of 2d quantum gravity to 3d and 4d, in the form of field theories over group manifolds. We show that the Barrett-Crane quantum gravity model arises naturally from a theory of this type,…
A central aspect of the cosmological constant problem is to understand why vacuum energy does not gravitate. In order to account for this observation, while allowing for nontrivial dynamics of the quantum vacuum, we motivate a novel…
This article shows in detail the computations made for the poster presented at the Symposium "Frontiers of Fundamental Physics" in July 2014. As was shown in a previous publication, a quantum gravity formulation exists on the basis of…
We investigate the Cartan formalism in $F(R)$ gravity. $F(R)$ gravity has been introduced as a theory to explain cosmological accelerated expansion by replacing the Ricci scalar $R$ in the Einstein-Hilbert action with a function of $R$. As…
We present an improved formulation of 4-dimensional Lorentzian spinfoam quantum gravity with cosmological constant. The construction of spinfoam amplitudes uses the state-integral model of PSL(2,$\mathbb{C}$) Chern-Simons theory and the…
We naturally extend the theory of gravity with a conformally coupled scalar field by only requiring conformal invariance of the scalar field equation of motion and not of the action. The classically extended theory incorporates a…
A careful study of the induced transformations on spatial quantities due to 4-dimensional spacetime diffeomorphisms in the canonical formulation of general relativity is undertaken. Use of a general formalism, which indicates the role of…
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 extend the lattice gauge theory-type derivation of the Barrett-Crane spin foam model for quantum gravity to other choices of boundary conditions, resulting in different boundary terms, and re-analyze the gluing of 4-simplices in this…
We present an effective four-dimensional formulation of the laws of gravity that respects the main features of a higher (five)-dimensional scenario of Randall-Sundrum type. The geometrical structure of the theory is that of a…
We derive a model of constrained topological gravity, a theory recently introduced by us through the twist of N=2 Liouville theory, starting from the general BRST algebra and imposing the moduli space constraint as a gauge fixing. To do…