Related papers: Hopf link volume simplicity constraints in spin fo…

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…

It is well-known that the sum over topologies in quantum gravity is ill-defined, due to a super-exponential growth of the number of geometries as a function of the space-time volume, leading to a badly divergent gravitational path integral.…

We report on the numerical analysis of the area correlations in spin foam gravity on a single 4-simplex considered by Rovelli in PRL 97 (2006) 151301. We compare the asymptotics and confirm the inverse squared distance leading behaviour at…

This paper develops a geometric framework for virtual constraints on Lie groups, with emphasis on mechanical systems modeled as affine connection systems. Virtual holonomic and virtual nonholonomic constraints, including linear and affine…

In the search for a covariant formulation for Loop Quantum Gravity, spin foams have arised as the corresponding discrete space-time structure and, among the different models, the Barrett-Crane model seems the most promising. Here, we study…

We study the 4-d holomorphic Spin Foam amplitude on arbitrary connected 2-complexes and degrees of divergence. With recently developed tools and truncation scheme, we derive a formula for a certain class of graphs, which allows us to write…

In this work we study a Spin Foam model for 4d Riemannian gravity, and propose a new way of imposing the simplicity constraints that uses the recently developed holomorphic representation. Using the power of the holomorphic integration…

We characterize when some small Seifert fibered spaces can be the convex boundaries of symplectic rational homology balls and give strong restrictions for others to bound such manifolds. In particular, we show that the only spherical…

This work is devoted to a systematic study of symplectic convexity for integrable Hamiltonian systems with elliptic and focus-focus singularities. A distinctive feature of these systems is that their base spaces are still smooth manifolds…

In quantum gravity the unitary evolution does not follow from the Wheeler-DeWitt dynamics equation as it follows from the Schr\"odinger equation in non-relativistic quantum mechanics. Therefore we can define a spin-foam model based on…

We establish constraints on the topology of smooth Lefschetz fibrations with $4$-dimensional fibers, by studying the family Bauer-Furuta invariant. To compute this invariant, we analyze the framed bordism class of 1-dimensional…

We review recent progress on two closely related sets of questions concerning convex co-compact hyperbolic manifolds, or convex domains in those manifolds, such as their convex core. The first set of questions is to what extent the…

We discuss the Hamiltonian formulation of gravity in 4-dimensional spacetime under Bondi-like coordinates ${v, r, x^a, a=2, 3}$. In Bondi-like coordinates, the 3-dimensional hypersurface is a null hypersurface and the evolution direction is…

We study the space of pseudo-holomorphic spheres in compact symplectic manifolds with convex boundary. We show that the theory of Gromov-Witten invariants can be extended to the class of semi-positive manifolds with convex boundary. This…

This work is developed in the context of Lorentzian spin-foams with space- and time-like boundaries. It is argued that the equations describing the semiclassical regime of the various spin-foam amplitudes admit a common biquaternionic…

We give a general definition of spin foam models, and then of models of 4d quantum gravity based on constraining BF theory. We highlight the construction and quantization ambiguities entering model building, among which the choice of…

We present a geometric formulation of quantum mechanics based on the symplectic structure of the projective Hilbert space. Building upon the standard K\"ahler framework, we introduce an extension in which the symplectic structure is allowed…

Let $M$ be a compact $n$-manifold of $\operatorname{Ric}_M\ge (n-1)H$ ($H$ is a constant). We are concerned with the following space form rigidity: $M$ is isometric to a space form of constant curvature $H$ under either of the following…

In this work, we provide a global condition for contraction with respect to an invariant Riemannian metric on reductive homogeneous spaces. Using left-invariant frames, vector fields on the manifold are horizontally lifted to the ambient…

We suggest a modification of the Barrett-Crane spin foam model of 4-dimensional Lorentzian general relativity motivated by the canonical quantization. The starting point is Lorentz covariant loop quantum gravity. Its kinematical Hilbert…