Related papers: Group field theory formulation of 3d quantum gravi…
We propose a new method of unifying gravity and the Standard Model by introducing a spin-foam model. We realize a unification between an SU(2) Yang-Mills interaction and 3D general relativity by considering a Spin(4) Plebanski action. The…
Calculations in Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) and spin-foams theory rely heavily on group theory of SU(2) and SL(2,C). Even though many monographs exist devoted to this theory, the different tools needed (e.g. representation theory, harmonic…
Starting from Plebanski formulation of gravity as a constrained BF theory we propose a new spin foam model for 4d Riemannian quantum gravity that generalises the well-known Barrett-Crane model and resolves the inherent to it ultra-locality…
We formulate quantum field theories of massive fields of arbitrary spins. The presence of both physical and fake particles, organized into multiplets, makes it possible to fulfill the requirements of locality, unitarity and…
Over the last decade there were significant advances in the understanding of quantum gravity coupled to point particles in 3D (2+1-dimensional) spacetime. Most notably it is emerging that the theory can be effectively described as a theory…
Any approach to pure quantum gravity must eventually face the question of coupling quantum matter to the theory. In the past, several ways of coupling matter to spin foam quantum gravity have been proposed, but the dynamics of the coupled…
Dimensional reduction of (super-)gravity theories to 3 dimensions results in sigma models on coset spaces G/H, such as the E_8/SO(16) coset in the bosonic sector of 3 dimensional maximal supergravity. The reverse process, oxidation, is the…
This paper proposes a method of unifying quantum mechanics and gravity based on quantum computation. In this theory, fundamental processes are described in terms of pairwise interactions between quantum degrees of freedom. The geometry of…
We propose and study a new action for three-dimensional massive gravity. This action takes a very simple form when written in terms of connection and triad variables, but the connection can also be integrated out to obtain a triad…
This thesis consists of two parts, connected by one central theme: the dynamics of the "shape of space". The first part of the thesis concerns the construction of a theory of gravity dynamically equivalent to general relativity (GR) in 3+1…
In Einstein's gravitational theory, the spacetime is Riemannian, that is, it has vanishing torsion and vanishing nonmetricity (covariant derivative of the metric). In the gauging of the general affine group ${A}(4,R)$ and of its subgroup…
Using Wigner-deformed Heisenberg oscillators, we construct 3D Chern--Simons models consisting of fractional-spin fields coupled to higher-spin gravity and internal non-abelian gauge fields. The gauge algebras consist of Lorentz-tensorial…
Over the last two years, the canonical approach to quantum gravity based on connections and triads has been put on a firm mathematical footing through the development and application of a new functional calculus on the space of gauge…
The turn of the millennium was a time of optimism about an approach to noncommutative geometry inspired by rich mathematical objects called `quantum groups' and its applications to quantum spacetime. This would model quantum gravity effects…
We study the quantum mechanics of a system of topologically interacting particles in 2+1 dimensions, which is described by coupling the particles to a Chern-Simons gauge field of an inhomogeneous group. Analysis of the phase space shows…
We study some aspects of gravity in relation to flat spacetime. At first, we study an accelerated observer in Minkowski space as a quantum tunnelling problem in Rindler space. Both Bosonic and Fermionic modes are calculated to construct a…
A new canonical Hopf algebra called the quantum pseudo-K\"ahler plane is introduced. This quantum group can be viewed as a deformation quantization of the complex two-dimensional plane $\mathbb{C}^2$ with a pseudo-K\"ahler metric, or as a…
This thesis is broadly split into two parts. In the first part, simple state sum models for minimally coupled fermion and scalar fields are constructed on a $1$-manifold. The models are independent of the triangulation and give the same…
We study the quantum geometry of the fuzzy sphere defined as the angular momentum algebra $[x_i,x_j]=2\imath\lambda_p \epsilon_{ijk}x_k$ modulo setting $\sum_i x_i^2$ to a constant, using a recently introduced 3D rotationally invariant…
We present the construction of a new state sum model for $4d$ Lorentzian quantum gravity based on the description of quantum simplicial geometry in terms of edge vectors. Quantum states and amplitudes for simplicial geometry are built from…