Related papers: Witten's 2+1 gravity on R x (Klein bottle)
A first-order formulation of gravity is developed in which the fundamental fields consist of an SL(2,C) connection and two spinor-valued 1-forms. It is shown that the first term of an expansion of the Einstein-Hilbert action leads to an…
New results and perspectives precipitate from the (modified as) Kaluza ansatz 2 (KA2), whereby, instead of appending $n$ Planck-scale (${\rm L_o}$) compact SL dimensions to ordinary 4D spacetime, one augments $n$ such dimensions by 3 large…
We construct a duality manifest gravitational theory for the special linear group, ${\mathbf{SL}(N)}$ with $N{\neq 4}$. The spacetime is formally extended, to have the dimension $\textstyle{\frac{1}{2}} N(N-1)$, yet is `gauged'.…
The gravity action on the piecewise flat Riemannian manifold is formulated using the discrete set of the nondegenerate 4$\times$4 matrices on the 3-simplices as some connection type variables. These variables are the discrete counterpart of…
We show how to obtain all covariant field equations for massless particles of arbitrary integer, or half-integer, helicity in four dimensions from the quantization of the rigid particle, whose action is given by the integrated extrinsic…
We investigate the $1+1+2$ covariant formalism in the presence of nonmetricity. Focusing on Locally Rotationally Symmetric spacetimes, we show how nonmetricity affects all the kinematic quantities involved in the covariant $1+1+2$…
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. While, for…
The paper presents a generalization and further development of our recent publications where solutions of the Klein-Fock-Gordon equation defined on a few particular $D=(2+1)$-dim static space-time manifolds were considered. The latter…
Analogous to the famous Euler angle parametrization in three-dimensional Euclidean space, a reflection-free Lorentz transformation in (2+1)-dimensional Minkowski space can be decomposed into three simple parts. Applying this decomposition…
In a former paper we proposed a model for the quantization of gravity by working in a bundle $E$ where we realized the Hamilton constraint as the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. However, the corresponding operator only acts in the fibers and not…
Starting from a WZWN action in the ISO(2,1) Poincare' group which describes a bosonized spinning string in 2+1 Minkowski space-time, we show that a sequence of non-trivial compactifications leads to the description of a spinless string…
We relate the Teichmuller spaces obtained by Hitchin to the Teichmuller spaces of $WA_{n}$-gravity. The relationship of this space to $W$-gravity is obtained by identifying the flat $PSL(n+1,{\BR})$ connections of Hitchin to generalised…
(2+1) dimensional gravity is equivalent to an exactly soluble non-Abelian Chern-Simons gauge field theory (E Witten 1988). Regarding this as the topological phase of quantum gravity in (2+1)d, we suggest a topological symmetry breaking by…
We discuss the possibility of a class of gauge theories, in four Euclidean dimensions, to describe gravity at quantum level. The requirement is that, at low energies, these theories can be identified with gravity as a geometrodynamical…
We consider spacetime to be a connected real 4-manifold equipped with a Lorentzian metric and an affine connection. The 10 independent components of the (symmetric) metric tensor and the 64 connection coefficients are the unknowns of our…
The quantization of the induced 2d-gravity on a compact spatial section is carried out in three different ways. In the three approaches the supermomentum constraint is solved at the classical level but they differ in the way the hamiltonian…
We construct an effective cosmological spin-foam model for a (2+1) dimensional spatially flat universe, discretized on a hypercubical lattice, containing both space- and time-like regions. Our starting point is the recently proposed…
These lectures briefly review our current understanding of classical and quantum gravity in three spacetime dimensions, concentrating on the quantum mechanics of closed universes and the (2+1)-dimensional black hole. Three formulations of…
A topological version of four-dimensional (Euclidean) Einstein gravity which we propose regards anti-self-dual 2-forms and an anti-self-dual part of the frame connections as fundamental fields. The theory describes the moduli spaces of…
We propose an explicit spin-foam amplitude for Lorentzian gravity in three dimensions, allowing for both space- and time-like boundaries. The model is based on two main requirements: that it should be structurally similar to its well-known…