Related papers: Knots and Quantum Gravity: Progress and Prospects
Chern-Simons field theory based on a compact non-abelian gauge group is studied as a theory of knots and links in three dimensions. A method to obtain the invariants for links made from braids of upto four strands is developed. This…
This paper explores the idea that within the framework of three-dimensional quantum gravity one can extend the notion of Feynman diagram to include the coupling of the particles in the diagram with quantum gravity. The paper concentrates on…
A brief review on the progress made in the study of Chern-Simons gauge theory since its relation to knot theory was discovered ten years ago is presented. Emphasis is made on the analysis of the perturbative study of the theory and its…
Yes, there is. - A new kind of gauge theory is introduced, where the minimal coupling and corresponding covariant derivatives are defined in the space of functions pertaining to the functional Schroedinger picture of a given field theory.…
The Feynman path integral of ordinary quantum mechanics is complexified and it is shown that possible integration cycles for this complexified integral are associated with branes in a two-dimensional A-model. This provides a fairly direct…
The idea that quantum gravity manifestations would be associated with a violation of Lorentz invariance is very strongly bounded and faces serious theoretical challenges. Other related ideas seem to be drowning in interpretational…
We study the integral expression of a knot invariant obtained as the second coefficient in the perturbative expansion of Witten's Chern-Simons path integral associated with a knot. One of the integrals involved turns out to be a…
Quantum General Relativity (QGR), sometimes called Loop Quantum Gravity, has matured over the past fifteen years to a mathematically rigorous candidate quantum field theory of the gravitational field. The features that distinguish it from…
Knots have a twisted history in quantum physics. They were abandoned as failed models of atoms. Only much later was the connection between knot invariants and Wilson loops in topological quantum field theory discovered. Here we show that…
This paper proposes the definition of a quantum knot as a linear superposition of classical knots in three dimensional space. The definition is constructed and examples are discussed. Then the paper details extensions and also limitations…
We study various aspects of higher-curvature theories of gravity built from contractions of the metric, the Riemann tensor and the covariant derivative, $\mathcal{L}(g^{ab},R_{abcd},\nabla_a)$. We characterise the linearized spectrum of…
In this paper, we consider a family of $n$-dimensional, higher-curvature theories of gravity whose action is given by a series of dimensionally extended conformal invariants. The latter correspond to higher-order generalizations of the…
Prominent approaches to quantum gravity struggle when it comes to incorporating a positive cosmological constant in their models. Using quantization of a complex $\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{C})$ Chern-Simons theory we include a cosmological…
A brief introduction to Topological Quantum Field Theory as well as a description of recent progress made in the field is presented. I concentrate mainly on the connection between Chern-Simons gauge theory and Vassiliev invariants, and…
Since the early days of search for a quantum theory of gravity the attempts have been mostly concentrated on the quantization of an otherwise classical system. The two most contentious candidate theories of gravity, sting theory and quantum…
In the late 1980s Witten used the Chern-Simons form of a connection to construct new invariants of 3-manifolds and knots, recovering in particular the Jones invariants. Since then the associated topological quantum field theory (TQFT) has…
The notion of a measure on the space of connections modulo gauge transformations that is invariant under diffeomorphisms of the base manifold is important in a variety of contexts in mathematical physics and topology. At the formal level,…
A crucial problem in quantum cosmology is a careful analysis of the one-loop semiclassical approximation for the wave function of the universe, after an appropriate choice of mixed boundary conditions. The results for Euclidean quantum…
A new approach to the quantization of Chern-Simons theory has been developed in recent papers of the author. It uses a "simulation" of the moduli space of flat connections modulo the gauge group which reveals to be related to a lattice…
Loop quantum gravity in its Hamiltonian form relies on a connection formulation of the gravitational phase space with three key properties: 1.) a compact gauge group, 2.) real variables, and 3.) canonical Poisson brackets. In conjunction,…