Related papers: The Invisibility of Diffeomorphisms
We discuss three different (conformally) Carrollian geometries and their relation to null infinity from the unifying perspective of Cartan geometry. Null infinity \emph{per se} comes with numerous redundancies in its intrinsic geometry and…
Asymptotic symmetries are a general and important feature of theories with long-ranging fields, such as gravity, electromagnetism, and Yang-Mills. They appear in the formalism once the analytic behaviour of fields near infinity is specified…
For vacuum Maxwell theory in four dimensions, a supplementary condition exists (due to Eastwood and Singer) which is invariant under conformal rescalings of the metric, in agreement with the conformal symmetry of the Maxwell equations.…
Four-dimensional Einstein gravity in the Palatini first order formalism is shown to possess a vector supersymmetry of the same type as found in the topological theories for Yang-Mills fields. A peculiar feature of the gravitational theory,…
The quantum analogue of general relativistic geometry should be implementable on smooth manifolds without an a priori metric structure, the kinematical covariance group acting by diffeomorphisms. Here I approach quantum gravity (QG) in the…
An important conjecture within the AdS/CFT correspondence relates holographic spacetime to the quantum computational complexity of the dual quantum field theory. However, the quantitative understanding of this relation is still an open…
We clarify the relation between noncommutative spacetimes and multifractional geometries, two quantum-gravity-related approaches where the fundamental description of spacetime is not given by a classical smooth geometry. Despite their…
The covariant form of the field equations for two--dimensional $R^2$--gravity with torsion as well as its Hamiltonian formulation are shown to suggest the choice of the light--cone gauge. Further a one--to--one correspondence between the…
We study duality defects in 2+1d theories with $\bZ^{(0)}_N\times\bZ^{(1)}_N$ global symmetry and trivial mixed 't Hooft anomaly. By gauging these symmetries simultaneously in half of the spacetime, we define duality defects for theories…
The canonical quantization of diffeomorphism invariant theories of connections in terms of loop variables is revisited. Such theories include general relativity described in terms of Ashtekar-Barbero variables and extension to Yang-Mills…
We present evidence that there is a 4D model that satisfies the conditions of renormalizability and diffeomorphism invariance simultaneously at the 2-loop level. The traceless mode is treated perturbatively, while the conformal mode can be…
We show in the framework of Pfaff systems theory, the functional dependences of the general analytic solutions of a suitable system of involutive differential equations describing the differences between the analytic solutions of the…
We show how Feynman amplitudes of standard QFT on flat and homogeneous space can naturally be recast as the evaluation of observables for a specific spin foam model, which provides dynamics for the background geometry. We identify the…
Diffeomorphism invariance breaking has been investigated in the literature in several contexts, including emergent General Relativity (GR). If GR emerges from an underlying theory without diffeomorphism invariance, there may be small…
In this thesis we take Einstein theory in dimension four seriously, and explore the special aspects of gravity in this number of dimension. Among the many surprising features in dimension four, one of them is the possibility of `Chiral…
We present a global conformal invariant on closed six-manifolds which obstructs the existence of a conformally Einstein metric. We show that this obstruction is nontrivial and, up to multiplication by a constant, is the unique such…
In gravitational theories involving higher curvature corrections the metric describes additional degrees of freedom beyond the graviton. Holographic duality maps these to operators in the dual CFT. We identify infinite families of theories…
For a compact $(2n+1)$-dimensional smooth manifold, let $\mu_M : B Diff_\partial (D^{2n+1}) \to B Diff (M)$ be the map that is defined by extending diffeomorphisms on an embedded disc by the identity. By a classical result of Farrell and…
This paper is a comprehensive investigation of the Affine Gauge Theory (AGT) as a gauge theory of gravity having the same mathematical structure as gauge theories of the other fundamental forces of nature. This mathematical structure…
This thesis deals with the construction of conserved charges for asymptotically flat spacetimes at spatial infinity in four spacetime dimensions in a hopefully pedagogical way. As a first motivation of this work, it highlights the…