Related papers: A discretization of Holst's action for general rel…
We study a generalized action for gravity as a constrained BF theory, and its relationship with the Plebanski action. We analyse the discretization of the constraints and the spin foam quantization of the theory, showing that it leads…
Spin foam models are an attempt for a covariant, or path integral formulation of canonical loop quantum gravity. The construction of such models usually rely on the Plebanski formulation of general relativity as a constrained BF theory and…
The possibility of using spin connection components as basic quantization variables of a conformal version of General Relativity is studied. The considered model contains gravitational degrees of freedom and a scalar dilaton field. The…
We consider discretizations of the Einstein action of general relativity such that the resulting discrete equations of motion form a consistent constrained system. Upon ``spin foam'' quantization of the system, consistency allows a natural…
I present a model of discrete gravity, which is formulated in terms of a topological gauge theory with defects. The theory has no local degrees of freedom and the gravitational field is trivial everywhere except at a number of colliding…
We provide the Barrett-Crane spin foam model for quantum gravity with a discrete action principle, consisting in the usual BF term with discretized simplicity constraints which in the continuum turn topological BF theory into gravity. The…
We develop a proposal for a theory of simplicial gravity with spinors as the fundamental configuration variables. The underlying action describes a mechanical system with finitely many degrees of freedom, the system has a Hamiltonian and…
We revise imposition of various constraints in spin foam models of 4-dimensional general relativity. We argue that the usual simplicity constraint must be supplemented by a constraint on holonomies and together they must be inserted…
We review the relation between Loop Quantum Gravity on a fixed graph and discrete models of gravity. We compare Regge and twisted geometries, and discuss discrete actions based on twisted geometries and on the discretization of the…
In a former paper we proposed a model for the quantization of gravity by working in a bundle $E$ where we realized the Hamilton constraint as the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. However, the corresponding operator only acts in the fibers and not…
We investigate a formulation of continuum 4d gravity in terms of a constrained topological (BF) theory, in the spirit of the Plebanski formulation, but involving only linear constraints, of the type used recently in the spin foam approach…
We consider a discrete model of euclidean quantum gravity in four dimensions based on a summation over random simplicial manifolds. The action used is the Einstein-Hilbert action plus an $R^2$-term. The phase diagram as a function of the…
Motivated by quantum mechanical considerations we earlier suggested an alternative action for discretised quantum gravity which has a dimension of length. It is the so called "linear" action. The proposed action is a "square root" of the…
Group Field Theories, a generalization of matrix models for 2d gravity, represent a 2nd quantization of both loop quantum gravity and simplicial quantum gravity. In this paper, we construct a new class of Group Field Theory models, for any…
We present a new method for the quantization of totally constrained systems including general relativity. The method consists in constructing discretized theories that have a well defined and controlled continuum limit. The discrete…
We present a brief description of the ``consistent discretization'' approach to classical and quantum general relativity. We exhibit a classical simple example to illustrate the approach and summarize current classical and quantum…
General Relativity can be reformulated as a diffeomorphism invariant gauge theory of the Lorentz group, with Lagrangian of the type $f(F\wedge F)$, where $F$ is the curvature 2-form of the spin connection. A theory from this class with a…
The Hamiltonian form of the Hilbert action in the first order tetrad formalism is examined. We perform a non-linear field redefinition of the canonical variables isolating the part of the spin connection which is canonically conjugate to…
We present a new regularisation of Euclidean Einstein gravity in terms of (sequences of) graphs. In particular, we define a discrete Einstein-Hilbert action that converges to its manifold counterpart on sufficiently dense random geometric…
Spin Foam Models are supposed to be discretised path integrals for quantum gravity constructed from the Plebanski-Holst action. The reason for there being several models currently under consideration is that no consensus has been reached…