Related papers: Spin Foam Quantization and Anomalies
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…
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…
Spin-foams are a proposal for defining the dynamics of loop quantum gravity via path integral. In order for a path integral to be at least formally equivalent to the corresponding canonical quantization, at each point in the space of…
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…
Spin foam models are an attempt for a covariant, or path integral formulation of canonical loop quantum gravity. The construction of such models usually rely on the Plebanski formulation of general relativity as a constrained BF theory and…
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…
Spin Foam Models are supposed to be discretised path integrals for quantum gravity constructed from the Plebanski-Holst action. The reason for there being several models currently under consideration is that no consensus has been reached…
We study the state-sum models of quantum gravity based on a representation 2-category of the Poincare 2-group. We call them spin-cube models, since they are categorical generalizations of spin-foam models. A spin-cube state sum can be…
A number of approaches to four-dimensional quantum gravity, such as loop quantum gravity and holography, situate areas as their fundamental variables. However, this choice of kinematics can easily lead to gravitational dynamics peaked on…
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…
Spin foam models are a new approach to a formulation of quantum gravity which is fully background independent, non-perturbative, and covariant, in the spirit of path integral formulations of quantum field theory. In this thesis we describe…
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,…
In this article we give a systematic definition of the recently introduced spin foam models for four dimensional quantum gravity reviewing the main results on their semiclassical limit on fixed discretizations.
The Husain-Kuchar theory is a four-dimensional background-independent model that has long been viewed as a useful model for addressing several conceptual and technical problems appearing in the quantization of general relativity mainly in…
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…
The first computation of a spin foam dynamics that provides a test of the quantum equations of motions of gravity is presented. Specifically, a triangulation that includes an inner edge is treated. The computation leverages the recently…
A key point in the spin foam approach to quantum gravity is the implementation of simplicity constraints in the partition functions of the models. Here, we discuss the imposition of these constraints in a phase space setting corresponding…
The Spin Foam approach to quantum gravity aims at providing a covariant path-integral formulation of canonical Loop Quantum Gravity. Since spin foam amplitudes are defined through discretisations of spacetime, understanding the continuum…
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…
Spin foams provide path integrals for quantum gravity, which employ discretizations as regulator. To obtain regulator independent predictions, we must remove these fiducial structures in a suitable refinement limit. In this chapter we…