Related papers: On the geometry of no-boundary instantons in loop …
New and non-trivial properties of off-shell instantons in loop quantum cosmology show that dynamical signature change naturally cures recently observed problems in the semiclassical path integral of quantum gravity. If left unsolved, these…
Proposing smooth initial conditions is one of the most important tasks in quantum cosmology. On the other hand, the low-energy effective action, appearing in the semiclassical path integral, can get nontrivial quantum corrections near…
We compute, from first principles, the quantum fluctuations about instanton saddle points of the Euclidean path integral for Einstein gravity coupled to a scalar field. The Euclidean two-point correlator is analytically continued into the…
While there does not at this time exist a complete canonical theory of full 3+1 quantum gravity, there does appear to be a satisfactory canonical quantization of minisuperspace models. The method requires no `choice of time variable' and…
In the framework of the Hartle-Hawking no-boundary proposal, we investigated quantum creation of the multidimensional universe with a cosmological constant ($\Lambda$) but without matter fields. We have found that the classical solutions of…
The Lorentzian Hamiltonian constraint is solved for isotropic loop quantum cosmology coupled to a massless scalar field. As in the Euclidean case, the discreteness of quantum geometry removes the classical singularity from the quantum…
We present a gauge-invariant treatment of singularity resolution using loop quantum gravity techniques with respect to local SU(2) transformations. Our analysis reveals many novel features of quantum geometry which were till now hidden in…
Quantum groups and non-commutative spaces have been repeatedly utilized in approaches to quantum gravity. They provide a mathematically elegant cut-off, often interpreted as related to the Planck-scale quantum uncertainty in position. We…
We present a theory of tunnelling geometries originating from the no-boundary quantum state of Hartle and Hawking. We reformulate the no-boundary wavefunction in the representation of true physical variables and calculate it in the one-loop…
A proper understanding of boundary-value problems is essential in the attempt of developing a quantum theory of gravity and of the birth of the universe. The present paper reviews these topics in light of recent developments in spectral…
Isotropic models in loop quantum cosmology allow explicit calculations, thanks largely to a completely known volume spectrum, which is exploited in order to write down the evolution equation in a discrete internal time. Because of genuinely…
We study canonical quantization of a closed Euclidean universe with a cosmological constant and a massless scalar field. The closed Euclidean universe with an ordinary matter state can be matched at a finite radius only with the closed…
In these lecture notes, I describe the motivation behind a recent formulation of a non-perturbative gravitational path integral for Lorentzian (instead of the usual Euclidean) space-times, and give a pedagogical introduction to its main…
We argue that the Lorentzian path integral is a better starting point for quantum cosmology than the Euclidean version. In particular, we revisit the mini-superspace calculation of the Feynman path integral for quantum gravity with a…
We propose a method to construct quantum theory of matter fields in a topology changing universe. Analytic continuation of the semiclassical gravity of a Lorentzian geometry leads to a non-unitary Schr\"{o}dinger equation in a Euclidean…
Loop Quantum Cosmology (LQC), mainly due to Bojowald, is not the cosmological sector of Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG). Rather, LQC consists of a truncation of the phase space of classical General Relativity to spatially homogeneous situations…
We study the euclidean covariant loop-quantum-gravity vertex numerically, using a cylindrically symmetric boundary state and a convenient value of the Barbero-Immirzi parameter. We show that a classical geometry emerges already at low spin.…
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 find a number of complex solutions of the Einstein equations in the so-called unimodular version of general relativity, and we interpret them as saddle points yielding estimates of a gravitational path integral over a space of almost…
Using the earlier developed classical Hamiltonian framework as the point of departure, we carry out a non-perturbative quantization of the sector of general relativity, coupled to matter, admitting non-rotating isolated horizons as inner…