Related papers: Timelike twisted geometries
We generalize the Hamiltonian picture of General Relativity coupled to classical matter, known as geometrodynamics, to the case where such matter is described by a Quantum Field Theory in Curved Spacetime, but gravity is still described by…
Over the last two years, the canonical approach to quantum gravity based on connections and triads has been put on a firm mathematical footing through the development and application of a new functional calculus on the space of gauge…
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…
Spin networks in loop quantum gravity provide a kinematical picture of quantum geometry but lack a natural mechanism for dynamical Dirac-type evolution, while the Wheeler--DeWitt equation typically enters only as an imposed constraint. We…
In the past, the possibility to employ (scalar) material reference systems in order to describe classical and quantum gravity directly in terms of gauge invariant (Dirac) observables has been emphasised frequently. This idea has been picked…
Wilson observables for 2+1 quantum gravity with negative cosmological constant, when the spatial manifold is a torus, exhibit several novel features: signed area phases relate the observables assigned to homotopic loops, and their…
If quantum gravity respects the principles of quantum mechanics, suitably generalized, it may be that a more viable approach to the theory is through identifying the relevant quantum structures rather than by quantizing classical spacetime.…
Recently the $\text{SU}(2)$ spin-network states in loop quantum gravity is generalized to those of the corresponding affine Lie algebra. We show that if one literally starts from the full $\text{SL}(2,\mathbb{C})$ group, this procedure…
The "problem of time" in canonical quantum gravity refers to the difficulties involved in defining a Hilbert space structure on states -- and local observables on this Hilbert space -- for a theory in which the spacetime metric is treated…
We present a non-perturbative quantization of general relativity coupled to dust and other matter fields. The dust provides a natural time variable, leading to a physical Hamiltonian with spatial diffeomorphism symmetry. The methods of loop…
The problem of how space-time responds to gravitating quantum matter in full quantum gravity has been one of the main questions that any program of quantization of gravity should address. Here we analyze this issue by considering the…
A general theory of quantum spinor structures on quantum spaces is presented, within the conceptual framework of the formalism of quantum principal bundles. Quantum analogs of all basic objects of the classical theory are constructed and…
We consider the quantization of the midi-superspace associated with a class of spacetimes with toroidal isometries, but without the compact spatial hypersurfaces of the well-known Gowdy models. By a symmetry reduction, the phase space for…
Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) is a promising approach to quantum gravity, in particular because it is based on a rigorous quantization of the kinematics of gravity. A difficult and still open problem in the LQG program is the construction of…
Results that illuminate the physical interpretation of states of nonperturbative quantum gravity are obtained using the recently introduced loop variables. It is shown that: i) While local operators such as the metric at a point may not be…
We present a way of understanding the curvature of space-time, the basic philosophy being that the (linear) geometry of any space is determined by the (linear) functionals on the algebra(s) of any fields defined on the space. It is known…
Curvature is a key notion in General Relativity, characterizing the local physical properties of spacetime. By contrast, the concept of curvature has received scant attention in nonperturbative quantum gravity. One may even wonder whether…
We show that General Relativity can be formulated as a constrained topological theory for flat 2-connections associated to the Poincar\'e 2-group. Matter can be consistently coupled to gravity in this formulation. We also show that the edge…
Quantum gravity is fundamentally different from the non-gravitational quantum field theories in the sense that most of the techniques derived for the latter cannot be easily extended to the former. For example, correlation functions in…
We continue a previous analysis of the covariant Hamiltonian symplectic structure of General Relativity for spatially bounded regions of spacetime. To allow for near complete generality, the Hamiltonian is formulated using any fixed…