Related papers: Spin foams, Refinement limit and Renormalization
In perturbative QED, the approximation is improved by summing more Feynman graphs; in non-perturbative QCD, by refining the lattice. Here we observe that in quantum gravity the two procedures may well be the same. We outline the…
Spinfoams provide a framework for the dynamics of loop quantum gravity that is manifestly covariant under the full four-dimensional diffeomorphism symmetry group of general relativity. In this way they complete the ideal of…
This is a review of the present status of loop and spin foam approaches to quantization of four-dimensional general relativity. It aims at raising various issues which seem to challenge some of the methods and the results often taken as…
Discrete models usually represent approximations to continuum physics. Cylindrical consistency provides a framework in which discretizations mirror exactly the continuum limit. Being a standard tool for the kinematics of loop quantum…
This article reviews the present status of the spin foam approach to the quantization of gravity. Special attention is payed to the pedagogical presentation of the recently introduced new models for four dimensional quantum gravity. The…
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 study the action of diffeomorphisms on spin foam models. We prove that in 3 dimensions, there is a residual action of the diffeomorphisms that explains the naive divergences of state sum models. We present the gauge fixing of this…
We show how Feynman amplitudes of standard QFT on flat and homogeneous space can naturally be recast as the evaluation of observables for a specific spin foam model, which provides dynamics for the background geometry. We identify the…
We review and discuss the role of diffeomorphism symmetry in quantum gravity models. Such models often involve a discretization of the space-time manifold as a regularization method. Generically this leads to a breaking of the symmetries to…
In this article we review the present status of the spin foam formulation of non-perturbative (background independent) quantum gravity. The article is divided in two parts. In the first part we present a general introduction to the main…
We propose a new holonomy formulation for spin foams, which naturally extends the theory space of lattice gauge theories. This allows current spin foam models to be defined on arbitrary two-complexes as well as to generalize current spin…
A number of background independent quantizations procedures have recently been employed in 4d nonperturbative quantum gravity. We investigate and illustrate these techniques and their relation in the context of a simple 2d topological…
The renormalization group has proven to be a very powerful tool in physics for treating systems with many length scales. Here we show how it can be adapted to provide a new class of algorithms for discrete optimization. The heart of our…
One of the most pressing issues for loop quantum gravity and spin foams is the construction of the continuum limit. In this paper, we propose a systematic coarse-graining scheme for three-dimensional lattice gauge models including spin…
Making the Lorentzian path integral for quantum gravity well-defined and computable has been a long standing challenge. In this work we adopt the recently proposed effective spin foam models to the Lorentzian case. This defines a path…
A background-independent route towards a universal continuum limit in discrete models of quantum gravity proceeds through a background-independent form of coarse graining. This review provides a pedagogical introduction to the conceptual…
We apply the ``consistent discretization'' approach to general relativity leaving the spatial slices continuous. The resulting theory is free of the diffeomorphism and Hamiltonian constraints, but one can impose the diffeomorphism…
While the use of spin networks has greatly improved our understanding of the kinematical aspects of quantum gravity, the dynamical aspects remain obscure. To address this problem, we define the concept of a `spin foam' going from one spin…
We formulate the spin foam representation of discrete SU(2) gauge theory as a product of vertex amplitudes each of which is the spin network generating function of the boundary graph dual to the vertex. In doing so the sums over spins have…
Effective spin foams provide the computationally most efficient spin foam models yet and are therefore ideally suited for applications e.g. to quantum cosmology. We provide here the first effective spin foam computations of a finite time…