Related papers: Spin-foam model for gravity coupled to massless sc…
Spin foam models of quantum gravity are based on Plebanski's formulation of general relativity as a constrained BF theory. We give an alternative formulation of gravity as BF theory plus a certain potential term for the B-field. When the…
A number of approaches to four-dimensional quantum gravity, such as loop quantum gravity and holography, situate areas as their fundamental variables. However, this choice of kinematics can easily lead to gravitational dynamics peaked on…
In the quest of a physical theory of quantum gravity, spin foam models, or in short spinfoams, propose a well-defined path integral summing over quantized discrete space-time geometries. At the crossroad of topological quantum field theory,…
Spin Foam Models (SFMs) are covariant formulations of Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) in 4 dimensions. This work studies the perturbations of SFMs on a flat background. It demonstrates for the first time that smooth curved spacetime geometries…
Spin-foam models are hoped to provide a dynamics for loop quantum gravity. These start from the Plebanski formulation of gravity, in which gravity is obtained from a topological field theory, BF theory, through constraints, which, however,…
In this article we lay foundations for a formal relationship of spin foam models of gravity and BF theory to their continuum canonical formulations. First the derivation of the spin foam model of the BF theory from the discrete BF theory…
We review aspects of loop quantum gravity and spin foam models at an introductory level, with special attention to questions frequently asked by non-specialists.
We give a short review of the spin foam models of quantum gravity, with an emphasis on the Barret-Crane model. After explaining the shortcomings of the Barret-Crane model, we briefly discuss two new approaches, one based on the 3d spin foam…
In this article we give a systematic definition of the recently introduced spin foam models for four dimensional quantum gravity reviewing the main results on their semiclassical limit on fixed discretizations.
It has been recently shown that a certain non-topological spin foam model can be obtained from the Feynman expansion of a field theory over a group. The field theory defines a natural ``sum over triangulations'', which removes the cut off…
A lattice quantum gravity model in 4 dimensional Riemannian spacetime is constructed based on the SU(2) Ashtekar formulation of general relativity. This model can be understood as one of the family of models sometimes called ``spin foam…
These notes are a didactic overview of the non perturbative and background independent approach to a quantum theory of gravity known as loop quantum gravity. The definition of real connection variables for general relativity, used as a…
We describe a class of spin foam models of four-dimensional quantum gravity which is based on the integration of the tetrad one-forms in the path integral for the Palatini action of General Relativity. In the Euclidian gravity case this…
We give a brief and a critical review of the Barret-Crane spin foam models of quantum gravity. Then we describe two new spin foam models which are obtained by direct quantization of General Relativity and do not have some of the drawbacks…
The canonical ``loop'' formulation of quantum gravity is a mathematically well defined, background independent, non perturbative standard quantization of Einstein's theory of General Relativity. Some among the most meaningful results of the…
We describe how a spin-foam state sum model can be reformulated as a quantum field theory of spin networks, such that the Feynman diagrams of that field theory are the spin-foam amplitudes. In the case of open spin networks, we obtain a new…
In this paper, we address the problem of the dynamics in three dimensional loop quantum gravity with zero cosmological constant. We construct a rigorous definition of Rovelli's generalized projection operator from the kinematical Hilbert…
Spin foam models are an approach to quantum gravity based on the concept of sum over states, which aims to describe quantum spacetime dynamics in a way that its parent framework, loop quantum gravity, has not as of yet succeeded. Since…
The most common spin foam models of gravity are widely believed to be discrete path integral quantizations of the Plebanski action. However, their derivation in present formulations is incomplete and lower dimensional simplex amplitudes are…
We give a very brief introduction to the group field theory approach to quantum gravity, a generalisation of matrix models for 2-dimensional quantum gravity to higher dimension, that has emerged recently from research in spin foam models.