Related papers: 2d TQFT and baby universes
We consider coupling an ordinary quantum field theory with an infinite number of degrees of freedom to a topological field theory. On R^d the new theory differs from the original one by the spectrum of operators. Sometimes the local…
A 2+1-dimensional topological quantum field theory (TQFT) may or may not admit topological (gapped) boundary conditions. A famous necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the existence of a topological boundary condition is that the…
Holographic dualities that relate type II strings on near-horizon Dp brane geometries to super Yang-Mills theories with sixteen supercharges in p+1 dimensions provide non-conformal generalizations of the famous AdS/CFT correspondence. For…
It has been conjectured that every $(2+1)$-TQFT is a Chern-Simons-Witten (CSW) theory labelled by a pair $(G,\lambda)$, where $G$ is a compact Lie group, and $\lambda \in H^4(BG;Z)$ a cohomology class. We study two TQFTs constructed from…
A duality between the large N 't Hooft limit of the WD_N minimal model CFTs and a higher spin gravity theory on AdS3 is proposed. The gravity theory has massless spin fields of all even spins s=2,4,6,..., as well as two real scalar fields…
We consider the topological abelian BF theory with radial boundary on a generic 3D manifold. Our aim is to study if, where and how the boundary keeps memory of the details of the background metric. We find that some features are…
We study a topological field theory in four dimensions on a manifold with boundary. A bulk-boundary interaction is introduced through a novel variational principle rather than explicitly. Through this scheme we find that the boundary values…
We show that there is a sector of quantum general relativity which may be expressed in a completely holographic formulation in terms of states and operators defined on a finite boundary. The space of boundary states is built out of the…
Starting from a Lie group G whose Lie algebra is equipped with an invariant nondegenerate symmetric bilinear form, we show that 4-dimensional BF theory with cosmological term gives rise to a TQFT satisfying a generalization of Atiyah's…
Recent work on cosmological amplitudes has established reality conditions (derived from unitarity) for general particle-creation processes in flat FLRW cosmologies, in the Bunch-Davies wavefunction. In light of these results, we propose a…
We propose a precise reformulation of 3d quantum gravity with negative cosmological constant in terms of a topological quantum field theory based on the quantization of the Teichm\"uller space of Riemann surfaces that we refer to as…
We study de Sitter JT gravity in the canonical formulation to illustrate constructions of Hilbert spaces in quantum gravity, which is challenging due to the Hamiltonian constraints. The key ideas include representing states as "invariants"…
We revisit a non-perturbation theory of quantum gravity in $1.5$ order underlying an emergent gravitational pair of $(4{\bar 4})$-brane with a renewed interest. In particular the formulation is governed by a geometric torsion ${\cal H}_3$…
We study the dS/CFT duality between minimal type-A higher-spin gravity and the free Sp(2N) vector model. We consider the bulk spacetime as "elliptic" de Sitter space dS_4/Z_2, in which antipodal points have been identified. We apply a…
The holographic principle states that the number of degrees of freedom describing the physics inside a volume (including gravity) is bounded by the area of the boundary (also called the screen) which encloses this volume. A stronger…
The absence of Birkhoff's theorem in effective quantum gravity models leads to a fundamental ambiguity in the vacuum sector, where a priori no unique vacuum solution exists. As a result, phenomenological investigations of the physical…
We formulate new boundary conditions that prove well defined variational principle and finite response functions for conformal gravity (CG). In the Anti--de Sitter/conformal field theory framework, gravity theory that is considered in the…
This thesis contains various results on unitary 2-representations of finite groups and their 2-characters, as well as on pivotal structures for fusion categories. The motivation is extended topological quantum field theory (TQFT), where the…
We compute bulk 3- and 4-point tachyon correlators in the 2d Liouville gravity with non-rational matter central charge c<1, following and comparing two approaches. The continuous CFT approach exploits the action on the tachyons of the…
The 3d spin-3 gravity theory is holographically dual to a 2d ${\cal W}_3$-extended CFT. In a large-c limit the symmetry algebra of the CFT reduces to $SU(1,2) \times SU(1,2)$. On the ground of symmetry the dual bulk space-time will be given…