Related papers: Spacetime as a Feynman diagram: the connection for…
In this work we show that 3d Feynman amplitudes of standard QFT in flat and homogeneous space can be naturally expressed as expectation values of a specific topological spin foam model. The main interest of the paper is to set up a…
Current theories of particle physics, including the standard model, are dominated by the paradigm that nature is basically translation invariant. Deviations from translation invariance are described by the action of forces. General…
"The Spin Foams for People Without the 3d/4d Imagination" could be an alternative title of our work. We derive spin foams from operator spin network diagrams} we introduce. Our diagrams are the spin network analogy of the Feynman diagrams.…
Spin foam models for quantum gravity are derived from lattice path integrals. The setting involves variables from both lattice BF theory and Regge calculus. The action consists in a Regge action, which depends on areas, dihedral angles and…
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 regularized lattice model for quantum gravity purely formulated in terms of fermions. The lattice action exhibits local Lorentz symmetry, and the continuum limit is invariant under general coordinate transformations. The metric…
The spin foam framework provides a way to define the dynamics of canonical loop quantum gravity in a spacetime covariant way, by using a path integral over histories of quantum states which can be interpreted as `quantum space-times'. This…
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…
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…
These notes are a didactic overview of the non perturbative and background independent approach to a quantum theory of gravity known as loop quantum gravity. The definition of real connection variables for general relativity, used as a…
We construct a group field theory model for quantum gravity minimally coupled to relativistic scalar fields, defining as well a corresponding discrete gravity path integral (and, implicitly, a coupled spin foam model) in its Feynman…
The goal of spin foam models is to provide a viable path integral formulation of quantum gravity. Because of background independence, their underlying framework has certain novel features that are not shared by path integral formulations of…
Starting from Ooguri's construction for $BF$ theory in three (and four) dimensions, we show how to construct a well defined theory with an infinite number of degrees of freedom. The spin network states that are kept invariant by the…
The canonical ``loop'' formulation of quantum gravity is a mathematically well defined, background independent, non perturbative standard quantization of Einstein's theory of General Relativity. Some among the most meaningful results of the…
Topological gravity is the reduction of Einstein's theory to spacetimes with vanishing curvature, but with global degrees of freedom related to the topology of the universe. We present an exact Hamiltonian lattice theory for topological…
A lattice model for four dimensional Euclidean quantum general relativity is proposed for a simplicial spacetime. It is shown how this model can be expressed in terms of a sum over worldsheets of spin networks, and an interpretation of…
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…
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…
We propose a spin foam model of four-dimensional quantum gravity which is based on the integration of the tetrads in the path integral for the Palatini action of General Relativity. In the Euclidian gravity case we show that the model can…
Spin foam vertex amplitudes are the key ingredient of spin foam models for quantum gravity. These fall into the realm of discretized path integral, and can be seen as generalized lattice gauge theories. They can be seen as an attempt at a…