Related papers: Diffeomorphism invariant classical-quantum path in…
In gravitational theories with boundaries, diffeomorphisms can become physical and acquire a non-vanishing Noether charge. Using the covariant phase space formalism, on shell of the gravitational constraints, the latter localizes on…
The path-integral approach to cosmology consists in the computation of transition amplitudes between states of the quantum geometry of the universe. In the past, the concrete computation of these transitions amplitudes has been performed in…
Free scalar field theory on 2 dimensional flat spacetime, cast in diffeomorphism invariant guise by treating the inertial coordinates of the spacetime as dynamical variables, is quantized using LQG type `polymer' representations for the…
In this thesis we analyze a very simple model of two dimensional quantum gravity based on causal dynamical triangulations (CDT). We present an exactly solvable model which indicates that it is possible to incorporate spatial topology…
We evaluate the phase diagram of quantum gravity within a fully diffeomorphism-invariant renormalisation group approach. The construction is based on the geometrical or Vilkovisky-DeWitt effective action. We also resolve the difference…
A generalization of the action principle of classical mechanics, motivated by the Closed Time Path (CTP) scheme of quantum field theory, is presented to deal with initial condition problems and dissipative forces. The similarities of the…
We define a modification of LQG in which graphs are required to consist in piecewise linear edges, which we call piecewise linear LQG (plLQG). At the diffeomorphism invariant level, we prove that plLQG is equivalent to standard LQG, as long…
A quantum hamiltonian which evolves the gravitational field according to time as measured by constant surfaces of a scalar field is defined through a regularization procedure based on the loop representation, and is shown to be finite and…
We analyze the perturbative implications of the most general high derivative approach to quantum gravity based on a diffeomorphism invariant local action. In particular, we consider the super-renormalizable case with a large number of…
We revisit the question of frame equivalence in Quantum Field Theory in the presence of gravity, a situation of relevance for theories aiming to describe the early Universe dynamics and Inflation in particular. We show that in those cases,…
A model for 2D-quantum gravity from the Virasoro symmetry is studied. The notion of space-time naturally arises as a homogeneous space associated with the kinematical (non-dynamical) SL(2,R) symmetry in the kernel of the Lie-algebra central…
The quantized canonical space-time coordinates of a relativistic point particle are expressed in terms of the elements of a complex Clifford algebra which combines the complex properties of SL(2.C) and quantum mechanics. When the quantum…
Inertial and gravitational mass or energy-momentum need not be the same for virtual quantum states. Separating their roles naturally leads to the gauge theory of volume-preserving diffeomorphisms of an inner four-dimensional space. The…
We study the cosmological implications of gravity models which break diffeomorphisms (Diff) invariance down to transverse diffeomorphisms (TDiff). We start from the most general gravitational action involving up to quadratic terms in…
We investigate the difference between classical and quantum dynamics of coupled magnetic dipoles. We prove that in general the dynamics of the classical interaction Hamiltonian differs from the corresponding quantum model, regardless of the…
We derive quantum kinetic equations for fermions in a homogeneous time-dependent background in presence of decohering collisions, by use of the Schwinger-Keldysh CTP-formalism. The quantum coherence (between particles and antiparticles) is…
We consider the role of the diffeomorphism constraint in the quantization of lattice formulations of diffeomorphism invariant theories of connections. It has been argued that in working with abstract lattices, one automatically takes care…
We introduce a new model of background independent physics in which the degrees of freedom live on a complete graph and the physics is invariant under the permutations of all the points. We argue that the model has a low energy phase in…
The degree of freedom of the scalar field in scalar-tensor gravity is employed as "time" to deparametrize the Hamiltonian constraint of the theory. The deparametrized system is then nonperturbatively quantized by the approach of loop…
We recall a classical theory of torsion gravity with an asymmetric metric, sourced by a Nambu-Goto + Kalb-Ramond string . We explain why this is a significant gravitational theory, and in what sense classical general relativity is an…