Related papers: Spin foams
A mathematical formalism for treating spacetime topology as a quantum observable is provided. We describe spacetime foam entirely in algebraic terms. To implement the correspondence principle we express the classical spacetime manifold of…
Effective spin foams provide the computationally most efficient spin foam models yet and are therefore ideally suited for applications e.g. to quantum cosmology. We provide here the first effective spin foam computations of a finite time…
Loop quantum cosmology (LQC) is used to provide concrete evidence in support of the general paradigm underlying spin foam models (SFMs). Specifically, it is shown that: i) the physical inner product in the timeless framework equals the…
External gravitational fields induce phase factors in the wave functions of particles. The phases are exact to first order in the background gravitational field, are manifestly covariant and gauge invariant and provide a useful tool for the…
We describe how the Barrett-Crane spin foam model defines transition amplitudes for quantum gravity states and how causality can be consistently implemented in it.
We construct a canonical formulation of general relativity for the case of a timelike foliation of spacetime. The formulation possesses explicit covariance with respect to Lorentz transformations in the tangent space. Applying the loop…
We present a problem relating measurements and information theory in spin foam models. In the three dimensional case of quantum gravity we can compute probabilities of spin network graphs and study the behaviour of the Shannon entropy…
The new information-theoretic Process Physics provides an explanation of space as a quantum foam system in which gravity is an inhomogeneous flow of the quantum foam into matter. The older Newtonian and General Relativity theories for…
We propose a new holonomy formulation for spin foams, which naturally extends the theory space of lattice gauge theories. This allows current spin foam models to be defined on arbitrary two-complexes as well as to generalize current spin…
A model-independent, locally generally covariant formulation of quantum field theory over four-dimensional, globally hyperbolic spacetimes will be given which generalizes similar, previous approaches. Here, a generally covariant quantum…
In quantum gravity, we envision renormalization as the key tool for bridging the gap between microscopic models and observable scales. For spin foam quantum gravity, which is defined on a discretisation akin to lattice gauge theories, the…
The spectral dimension has proven to be a very informative observable to understand the properties of quantum geometries in approaches to quantum gravity. In loop quantum gravity and its spin foam description, it has not been possible so…
The motion of spinning test-masses in curved space-time is described with a covariant hamiltonian formalism. A large class of hamiltonians can be used with the model- independent Poisson-Dirac brackets, to obtain equations of motion. Here…
The paper studies spin-orbit interaction (i.e. the effect the spin has on the particle's trajectory in a magnetic field) as a model of quantum computation. The two-level spin quantum system is examined using the stochastic mechanics…
We developed a path integral formalism for the quantum mechanics in a rotating reference of frame, and proposed a spin path integral description for the spin degrees of freedom in it. We have also give some examples for the applications of…
Spin foam models are an approach to quantum gravity based on the concept of sum over states, which aims to describe quantum spacetime dynamics in a way that its parent framework, loop quantum gravity, has not as of yet succeeded. Since…
This is a review of the present status of loop and spin foam approaches to quantization of four-dimensional general relativity. It aims at raising various issues which seem to challenge some of the methods and the results often taken as…
Quantum gravity, as a fundamental theory of space-time, is expected to reveal how the universe may have started, perhaps during or before an inflationary epoch. It may then leave a potentially observable (but probably minuscule) trace in…
The problem of finding the quantum theory of the gravitational field, and thus understanding what is quantum spacetime, is still open. One of the most active of the current approaches is loop quantum gravity. Loop quantum gravity is a…
This is my Th\`ese d'Habilitation (HDR) on the topic of spinfoam models for quantum gravity, which I presented in l'Ecole Normale Sup\'erieure de Lyon on december 16 2010. The spinfoam framework is a proposal for a regularized path integral…