Related papers: Spin foams as Feynman diagrams
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…
We present a spin foam model in which the fundamental ``bubble amplitudes'' (the analog of the one-loop corrections in quantum field theory) are finite as the cutoff is removed. The model is a natural variant of the field theoretical…
Spin foam models are an approach to quantum gravity based on the concept of sum over states, which aims to describe quantum spacetime dynamics in a way that its parent framework, loop quantum gravity, has not as of yet succeeded. Since…
By explicitly allowing for topology to change as a function of time, two-dimensional quantum gravity defined through causal dynamical triangulations gives rise to a new continuum string field theory. Within a matrix-model formulation we…
We link the notion causality with the orientation of the 2-complex on which spin foam models are based. We show that all current spin foam models are orientation-independent, pointing out the mathematical structure behind this independence.…
We review the dual transformation from pure lattice gauge theory to spin foam models with an emphasis on a geometric viewpoint. This allows us to give a simple dual formulation of SU(N) Yang-Mills theory, where spin foam surfaces are…
A spin-foam model is derived from the canonical model of Loop Quantum Gravity coupled to a massless scalar field. We generalized to the full theory the scheme first proposed in the context of Loop Quantum Cosmology by Ashtekar, Campiglia…
We study the issue of coupling among 4-simplices in the context of spin foam models obtained from a group field theory formalism. We construct a generalisation of the Barrett-Crane model in which an additional coupling between the normals…
In these notes, the application of Feynman's sum-over-paths approach to thermal phase transitions is discussed. The paradigm of such a spacetime approach to critical phenomena is provided by the high-temperature expansion of spin models.…
Group field theories represent a 2nd quantized reformulation of the loop quantum gravity state space and a completion of the spin foam formalism. States of the canonical theory, in the traditional continuum setting, have support on graphs…
Some general remarks are made about the quantum theory of scalar fields and the definition of momentum in curved space. Special emphasis is given to field theory in anti-de Sitter space, as it represents a maximally symmetric space-time of…
Spin foam models of quantum gravity are based on Plebanski's formulation of general relativity as a constrained BF theory. We give an alternative formulation of gravity as BF theory plus a certain potential term for the B-field. When the…
The spinfoam framework is a proposal for a regularized path integral for quantum gravity. Spinfoams define quantum space-time structures describing the evolution in time of the spin network states for quantum geometry derived from Loop…
Spin foam models, loop quantum gravity and group field theory are discussed as quantum gravity candidate theories and usually involve a continuous Lie group. We advocate here to consider quantum gravity inspired models with finite groups,…
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…
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…
An approximate model of the spacetime foam is offered in which each quantum handle (wormhole) is a 5D wormhole-like solution. A spinor field is introduced for an effective description of this foam. The topological handles of the spacetime…
Using the {\em cutting and sewing} procedure we show how to get Feynman diagrams, up to two-loop order, of $\Phi^{4}$-theory with an internal SU(N) symmetry group, starting from tachyon amplitudes of the open bosonic string theory. In a…
Spin foams are models of quantum gravity and therefore quantum space time. A key open issue is to determine the possible continuum phases of these models. Progress on this issue has been prohibited by the complexity of the full…
We give a very brief introduction to the group field theory approach to quantum gravity, a generalisation of matrix models for 2-dimensional quantum gravity to higher dimension, that has emerged recently from research in spin foam models.