Related papers: Spin foam model for Lorentzian General Relativity

Spin-foam models are hoped to provide a dynamics for loop quantum gravity. These start from the Plebanski formulation of gravity, in which gravity is obtained from a topological field theory, BF theory, through constraints, which, however,…

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…

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…

It has been recently shown that a certain non-topological spin foam model can be obtained from the Feynman expansion of a field theory over a group. The field theory defines a natural ``sum over triangulations'', which removes the cut off…

In the quest of a physical theory of quantum gravity, spin foam models, or in short spinfoams, propose a well-defined path integral summing over quantized discrete space-time geometries. At the crossroad of topological quantum field theory,…

A lattice quantum gravity model in 4 dimensional Riemannian spacetime is constructed based on the SU(2) Ashtekar formulation of general relativity. This model can be understood as one of the family of models sometimes called ``spin foam…

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…

This thesis is developed in the context of the spin-foam approach to quantum gravity; all results are concerned with the Lorentzian theory and with semiclassical methods. A correspondence is given between Majorana 2-spinors and time-like…

A surface theoretic view of non-perturbative quantum gravity as "spin-foams" was proposed by Baez. A possibility of constructing such a model was studied some time ago based on (2+1) dimensional general relativity as a reformulation of the…

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…

We describe here some new results concerning the Lorentzian Barrett-Crane model, a well-known spin foam formulation of quantum gravity. Generalizing an existing finiteness result, we provide a concise proof of finiteness of the partition…

We study the semi-classical limit of the recently proposed coherent spin foam model for (2+1) Lorentzian quantum gravity. Specifically, we analyze the gluing equations derived from the stationary phase approximation of the vertex amplitude.…

This review is devoted to the analysis of the mutual consistency of the spin foam and canonical loop quantizations in three and four spacetime dimensions. In the three-dimensional context, where the two approaches are in good agreement, we…

Loop quantum cosmology (LQC) is used to provide concrete evidence in support of the general paradigm underlying spin foam models (SFMs). Specifically, it is shown that: i) the physical inner product in the timeless framework equals the…

In loop quantum gravity we now have a clear picture of the quantum geometry of space, thanks in part to the theory of spin networks. The concept of `spin foam' is intended to serve as a similar picture for the quantum geometry of spacetime.…

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 for pure gauge fields coupled to Riemannian quantum gravity in four dimensions. The model is formulated for the triangulation of a four-manifold which is given merely combinatorially. The Riemannian…

A covariant spin-foam formulation of quantum gravity has been recently developed, characterized by a kinematics which appears to match well the one of canonical loop quantum gravity. In this paper we reconsider the implementation of the…

Just as 3d state sum models, including 3d quantum gravity, can be built using categories of group representations, "2-categories of 2-group representations" may provide interesting state sum models for 4d quantum topology, if not quantum…

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…