Related papers: From spin foams to area metric dynamics to gravito…
Area Regge calculus is a candidate theory of simplicial gravity, based on the Regge action with triangle areas as the dynamical variables. It is characterized by metric discontinuities and vanishing deficit angles. Area Regge calculus…
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 Spin Foam approach to quantum gravity aims at providing a covariant path-integral formulation of canonical Loop Quantum Gravity. Since spin foam amplitudes are defined through discretisations of spacetime, understanding the continuum…
We offer a physicists' proof that center-vortex theory requires the area in the Wilson-loop area law to involve an extremal area. Area-law dynamics is determined by integrating over Wilson loops only, not over surface fluctuations for a…
We propose an explicit spin-foam amplitude for Lorentzian gravity in three dimensions, allowing for both space- and time-like boundaries. The model is based on two main requirements: that it should be structurally similar to its well-known…
The quantum geometry arising in Loop Quantum Gravity has been known to semi-classically lead to generalizations of length-geometries. There have been several attempts to interpret these so called twisted geometries and understand their role…
We develop a model of spatially flat, homogeneous and isotropic cosmology in Lorentzian Regge calculus, employing 4-dimensional Lorentzian frusta as building blocks. By examining the causal structure of the discrete spacetimes obtained by…
We consider the recent calculation gr-qc/0508124 of the graviton propagator in the spinfoam formalism. Within the 3d toy model introduced in gr-qc/0512102, we test how the spinfoam formalism can be used to construct the perturbative…
The Barrett-Crane spin foam model for quantum gravity provides an excellent setting for testing analytical and numerical tools used to probe spinfoam models. Here, we complete the report on the numerical analysis of the single 4-simplex…
In this paper, we study the discrete classical phase space of loop gravity, which is expressed in terms of the holonomy-flux variables, and show how it is related to the continuous phase space of general relativity. In particular, we prove…
The spectral dimension has proven to be a very informative observable to understand the properties of quantum geometries in approaches to quantum gravity. In loop quantum gravity and its spin foam description, it has not been possible so…
We study the behavior of holonomy spin foam partition functions, a form of lattice gauge gravity, on generic 4d-triangulations using micro local analysis. To do so we adapt tools from the renormalization theory of quantum field theory on…
Area metrics are an intriguing generalization of length metrics which appears in several quantum-gravity approaches. We describe the space of diffeomorphism-invariant area-metric actions quadratic in fluctuations and derivatives. A general…
We investigate quantum gravity in four dimensions using the Regge approach on triangulations of the four-torus with general, non-regular incidence matrices. We find that the simplicial lattice tends to develop spikes for vertices with low…
The relation between Loop Quantum Gravity and Regge calculus has been pointed out many times in the literature. In particular the large spin asymptotics of the Barrett-Crane vertex amplitude is known to be related to the Regge action. In…
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…
In the context of a string-inspired running vacuum model (RVM) of cosmology with anomalies and torsion-induced axion-like fields, we discuss quantum corrections to the corresponding energy density, in approximately de Sitter eras, during…
We explore how rotational invariance is systematically recovered from calculations on hyper-cubic lattices through the use of smeared lattice operators that smoothly evolve into continuum operators with definite angular momentum as the…
It is proposed that gravity may arise in the low energy limit of a model of matter fields defined on a special kind of a dynamical random lattice. Time is discretized into regular intervals, whereas the discretization of space is random and…
We explore the space of meromorphic amplitudes with extra constraints coming from the shape of the leading Regge trajectory. This information comes in two guises: it bounds the maximal spin of exchanged particles of a given mass; it leads…