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It has been a long entertained idea that self-bound gravitons, so-called geons, could be a dark matter candidate or form (primordial) black holes. The development of viable candidates for quantum gravity allows now to investigate these…
In this paper, Dirac Quantization of $3D$ gravity in the first-order formalism is attempted where instead of quantizing the connection and triad fields, the connection and the triad 1-forms themselves are quantized. The exterior derivative…
It is possible that relativistic symmetries become deformed in the semiclassical regime of quantum gravity. Mathematically, such deformations lead to the noncommutativity of spacetime geometry and non-vanishing curvature of momentum space.…
In three spacetime dimensions, general relativity drastically simplifies, becoming a ``topological'' theory with no propagating local degrees of freedom. Nevertheless, many of the difficult conceptual problems of quantizing gravity are…
We present in detail a four-dimensional unified quantum theory. In this theory, we identify three class of parameters, coordinate-momentum, spin and gauge, as all and as the only fundamental parameters to describe quantum fields. The…
The cosmological constant problem is one of the long-standing issues of modern physics. While we can measure the value of the cosmological constant with great accuracy, we are not able to calculate it in a coherent theoretical framework. On…
This is a brief review of modified gravity cosmologies. Generically extensions of gravity action involve higher derivative terms, which can result in ghosts and instabilities. There are three ways to circumvent this: Chern-Simons terms,…
Any canonical quantum theory can be understood to arise from the compatibility of the statistical geometry of distinguishable observations with the canonical Poisson structure of Hamiltonian dynamics. This geometric perspective offers a…
These notes are the written version of two lectures delivered at the VIII Mexican School on Particles and Fields on November 1998. The level of the notes is basic assuming only some knowledge on Statistical Mechanics, General Relativity and…
We combine the "evolving constants" approach to the construction of observables in canonical quantum gravity with the Page--Wootters formulation of quantum mechanics with a relational time for generally covariant systems. This overcomes the…
General N=(1,1) dilaton supergravity in two dimensions allows a background independent exact quantization of the geometric part, if these theories are formulated as specific graded Poisson-sigma models. The strategy developed for the…
The requirement that physical phenomena associated with gravitational collapse should be duly reconciled with the postulates of quantum mechanics implies that at a Planckian scale our world is not 3+1 dimensional. Rather, the observable…
In the canonical approach to general relativity it is customary to parametrize the phase space by initial data on spacelike hypersurfaces. However, if one seeks a theory dealing with observations that can be made by a single localized…
In the investigation and resolution of the cosmological constant problem the inclusion of the dynamics of quantum gravity can be a crucial step. In this work we suggest that the quantum constraints in a canonical theory of gravity can…
We perform a non-perturbative sum over geometries in a (2+1)-dimensional quantum gravity model given in terms of Causal Dynamical Triangulations. Inspired by the concept of triangulations of product type introduced previously, we impose an…
The construction of a consistent theory of quantum gravity is a problem in theoretical physics that has so far defied all attempts at resolution. One ansatz to try to obtain a non-trivial quantum theory proceeds via a discretization of…
In this paper we report some results on the expectation values of a set of observables introduced for 3-dimensional Riemannian quantum gravity with positive cosmological constant, that is, observables in the Turaev-Viro model. Instead of…
The covariance of loop quantum gravity studies of spherically symmetric space-times has recently been questioned. This is a reasonable worry, given that they are formulated in terms of slicing-dependent variables. We show explicitly that…
Local observables in (perturbative) quantum gravity are notoriously hard to define, since the gauge symmetry of gravity -- diffeomorphisms -- moves points on the manifold. In particular, this is a problem for backgrounds of high symmetry…
In its canonical formulation, general relativity is subject to gauge transformations that are equivalent to space-time coordinate changes of general covariance only when the gauge generators, given by the Hamiltonian and diffeomorphism…