Related papers: Purely geometric path integral for spin foams
It is well known that the SU(2)-gauge invariant phase space of loop gravity can be represented in terms of twisted geometries. These are piecewise-linear-flat geometries obtained by gluing together polyhedra, but the resulting geometries…
We investigate the Hilbert space in the Lorentz covariant approach to loop quantum gravity. We restrict ourselves to the space where all area operators are simultaneously diagonalizable, assuming that it exists. In this sector quantum…
The notion of a measure on the space of connections modulo gauge transformations that is invariant under diffeomorphisms of the base manifold is important in a variety of contexts in mathematical physics and topology. At the formal level,…
We study the coupling of massive fermions to the quantum mechanical dynamics of spacetime emerging from the spinfoam approach in three dimensions. We first recall the classical theory before constructing a spinfoam model of quantum gravity…
We study the problem of how to derive conformal symmetry in the framework of quantum gravity. We start with a generic gravitational theory which is invariant under both the general coordinate transformation (GCT) and Weyl transformation (or…
Certain natural geometric approximation schemes are developed for Wiener measure on a compact Riemannian manifold. These approximations closely mimic the informal path integral formulas used in the physics literature for representing the…
A new formulation of relativistic quantum mechanics is presented and applied to a free, massive, and spin zero elementary particle in the Minkowski spacetime. The reformulation requires that time and space, as well as the timelike and…
This paper proposes a definition of gravitational observables and of their path integral formula within the framework of ADM foliation and the choice of unimodular gauge classes. The method enforces a BRST invariant gauge fixing of the…
The transformation of the path integral measure under the reduction procedure in the dynamical systems with a symmetry is considered. The investigation is carried out in the case of the Wiener--type path integrals that are used for…
In loop quantum gravity we now have a clear picture of the quantum geometry of space, thanks in part to the theory of spin networks. The concept of `spin foam' is intended to serve as a similar picture for the quantum geometry of spacetime.…
The path-integral calculation for the free energy of a spin-1/2 Dirac-fermion gas is performed in spherical polar coordinates for a flat spacetime geometry. Its equivalence with the Cartesian-coordinate representation is explicitly…
Plebanski's second heavenly equation reduces the problem of finding a self-dual Einstein metric to solving a non-linear second-order PDE for a single function. Plebanski's original equation is for self-dual metrics obtained as perturbations…
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…
A new path equation in absolute parallelism (AP) geometry is derived. The equation is a generalization of three path equations derived in a previous work. It can be considered as a geodesic equation modified by a torsion term, whose…
A covariant spin-foam formulation of quantum gravity has been recently developed, characterized by a kinematics which appears to match well the one of canonical loop quantum gravity. In this paper we reconsider the implementation of the…
We describe a theory of quantum gravity which is based on the assumption that the spacetime structure at small distances is given by a piecewise linear (PL) 4-manifold corresponding to a triangulation of a smooth 4-manifold. The fundamental…
The path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, i.e., the idea that the evolution of a quantum system is determined as a sum over all the possible trajectories that would take the system from the initial to its final state of its…
The path integral formulation of quantum mechanics constructs the propagator by evaluating the action S for all classical paths in coordinate space. A corresponding momentum path integral may also be defined through Fourier transforms in…
Treating the gravitational force on the same footing as the electroweak and strong forces, we present a quantum field theory of gravity based on spin and scaling gauge symmetries. A biframe spacetime is initiated to describe such a quantum…
Using concepts of geometric orthogonality and linear independence, we logically deduce the form of the Pauli spin matrices and the relationships between the three spatially orthogonal basis sets of the spin-1/2 system. Rather than a…