Related papers: New action for simplicial gravity in four dimensio…
The Hamiltonian formulation of scalar-tensor theories of gravity is derived from their Lagrangian formulation by Hamiltonian analysis. The Hamiltonian formalism marks off two sectors of the theories by the coupling parameter $\omega(\phi)$.…
We give a very concise review of the group field theory formalism for non-perturbative quantum gravity, a higher dimensional generalisation of matrix models. We motivate it as a simplicial and local realisation of the idea of 3rd…
Since the early days of search for a quantum theory of gravity the attempts have been mostly concentrated on the quantization of an otherwise classical system. The two most contentious candidate theories of gravity, sting theory and quantum…
The scalar-tensor theories of gravity in spacetime dimensions $D+1>2$ are studied. By doing Hamiltonian analysis, we obtain the geometrical dynamics of the theories from their Lagrangian. The Hamiltonian formalism indicates that the…
I review the formalism of loop quantum gravity, in both its real and complex formulations, and spin foam theory which is its path integral counterpart. Spin networks for non-compact groups are introduced (following hep-th/0205268) to deal…
We give a spinorial set of Hamiltonian variables for General Relativity in any dimension greater than 2. This approach involves a study of the algebraic properties of spinors in higher dimension, and of the elimination of second-class…
The gravity-scalar field system in spherical symmetry provides a natural setting for exploring gravitational collapse and its aftermath in quantum gravity. In a canonical approach, we give constructions of the Hamiltonian operator, and of…
Any canonical quantum theory can be understood to arise from the compatibility of the statistical geometry of distinguishable observations with the canonical Poisson structure of Hamiltonian dynamics. This geometric perspective offers a…
The paper concerns the fictitious entanglement of the so-called ``singularities'' in problems, pertaining to quantum gravity, due, in point of fact, to the way we try to employ, in that context, differential geometry, the latter being…
The spin foam formalism provides transition amplitudes for loop quantum gravity. Important aspects of the dynamics are understood, but many open questions are pressing on. In this paper we address some of them using a twistorial…
A positive semi-definite Euclidean action for arbitrary four-topologies can be constructed by adding appropriate Yang-Mills and topological terms to the Samuel-Jacobson-Smolin action of gravity with (anti)self-dual variables. Moreover,…
We perform a quantization of the loop gravity phase space purely in terms of spinorial variables, which have recently been shown to provide a direct link between spin network states and simplicial geometries. The natural Hilbert space to…
We provide an off-shell formulation of four-dimensional higher spin gravity based on a covariant Hamiltonian action on an open nine-dimensional Poisson manifold whose boundary consists of the direct product of spacetime and a noncommutative…
The gauge approach to gravity based on the local Lorentz group with a general independent affine connection A_{\mu cd} is developed. We consider SO(1,3) gauge theory with a Lagrangian quadratic in curvature as a simple model of quantum…
Present-day quantum field theory can be regularized by a decomposition into quantum simplices. This replaces the infinite-dimensional Hilbert space by a high-dimensional spinor space and singular canonical Lie groups by regular spin groups.…
We present the construction of a physical Hamiltonian operator in the deparametrized model of loop quantum gravity coupled to a free scalar field. This construction is based on the use of the recently introduced curvature operator, and on…
A particular approach to topology change in quantum gravity is reviewed, showing that several aspects of Stephen's work are intertwined with it in an essential way. Speculations are made on possible implications for the causal set approach…
A Wilson loop is defined, in 4-D pure Einstein gravity, as the trace of the holonomy of the Christoffel connection or of the spin connection, and its invariance under the symmetry transformations of the action is showed (diffeomorphisms and…
In this thesis we consider the problem of dynamics in canonical loop quantum gravity, primarily in the context of deparametrized models, in which a scalar field is taken as a physical time variable for the dynamics of the gravitational…
The implementation of the dynamics in loop quantum gravity (LQG) is still an open problem. Here, we discuss a tentative dynamics for the simplest class of graphs in LQG: Two vertices linked with an arbitrary number of edges. We find an…