Related papers: Spin-foam model for gravity coupled to massless sc…
Spin foam models, loop quantum gravity and group field theory are discussed as quantum gravity candidate theories and usually involve a continuous Lie group. We advocate here to consider quantum gravity inspired models with finite groups,…
Spin foam models are a new approach to a formulation of quantum gravity which is fully background independent, non-perturbative, and covariant, in the spirit of path integral formulations of quantum field theory. In this thesis we describe…
We construct a class of spin foam models describing matter coupled to gravity, such that the gravitational sector is described by the unitary irreducible representations of the appropriate symmetry group, while the matter sector is…
Spin foam models for quantum gravity are derived from lattice path integrals. The setting involves variables from both lattice BF theory and Regge calculus. The action consists in a Regge action, which depends on areas, dihedral angles and…
Any approach to pure quantum gravity must eventually face the question of coupling quantum matter to the theory. In the past, several ways of coupling matter to spin foam quantum gravity have been proposed, but the dynamics of the coupled…
Spin foam models are the path integral counterparts to loop quantized canonical theories. In the last few years several spin foam models of gravity have been proposed, most of which live on finite simplicial lattice spacetime. The lattice…
This is an introduction to spin foam models for non-perturbative quantum gravity, an approach that lies at the point of convergence of many different research areas, including loop quantum gravity, topological quantum field theories, path…
We present a spin foam formulation of Lorentzian quantum General Relativity. The theory is based on a simple generalization of an Euclidean model defined in terms of a field theory over a group. Its vertex amplitude turns out to be the one…
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 simplicial framework of Engle-Pereira-Rovelli-Livine spin-foam models is generalized to match the diffeomorphism invariant framework of loop quantum gravity. The simplicial spin-foams are generalized to arbitrary linear 2-cell…
In this article we review the present status of the spin foam formulation of non-perturbative (background independent) quantum gravity. The article is divided in two parts. In the first part we present a general introduction to the main…
The spin foam framework provides a way to define the dynamics of canonical loop quantum gravity in a spacetime covariant way, by using a path integral over histories of quantum states which can be interpreted as `quantum space-times'. This…
Spin foam vertex amplitudes are the key ingredient of spin foam models for quantum gravity. These fall into the realm of discretized path integral, and can be seen as generalized lattice gauge theories. They can be seen as an attempt at a…
While the use of spin networks has greatly improved our understanding of the kinematical aspects of quantum gravity, the dynamical aspects remain obscure. To address this problem, we define the concept of a `spin foam' going from one spin…
This paper aims at clarifying the link between Loop Quantum Gravity and Spin-Foam models in four dimensions. Starting from the canonical framework, we construct an operator P acting on the space of cylindrical functions Cyl($\Gamma$), where…
A surface theoretic view of non-perturbative quantum gravity as "spin-foams" was proposed by Baez. A possibility of constructing such a model was studied some time ago based on (2+1) dimensional general relativity as a reformulation of the…
The goal of spin foam models is to provide a viable path integral formulation of quantum gravity. Because of background independence, their underlying framework has certain novel features that are not shared by path integral formulations of…
We propose a spin foam model for pure gauge fields coupled to Riemannian quantum gravity in four dimensions. The model is formulated for the triangulation of a four-manifold which is given merely combinatorially. The Riemannian…
Loop quantum gravity has provided us with a canonical framework especially devised for background independent and diffeomorphism invariant gauge field theories. In this quantization the fundamental excitations are called spin network…
The state space of Loop Quantum Gravity admits a decomposition into orthogonal subspaces associated to diffeomorphism equivalence classes of spin-network graphs. In this paper I investigate the possibility of obtaining this state space from…