Related papers: Causal structure and diffeomorphismsm in Ashtekar'…
The possibility of the extension of spatial diffeomorphisms to a larger family of symmetries in a class of classical field theories is studied. The generator of the additional local symmetry contains a quadratic kinetic term and a potential…
We discuss the BRST cohomologies of the invariants associated with the description of classical and quantum gravity in four dimensions, using the Ashtekar variables. These invariants are constructed from several BRST cohomology sequences.…
It might seem that a choice of a time coordinate in Hamiltonian formulations of general relativity breaks the full four-dimensional diffeomorphism covariance of the theory. This is not the case. We construct explicitly the complete set of…
A generally covariant gauge theory for an arbitrary gauge group with dimension $\geq 3$, that reduces to Ashtekar's canonical formulation of gravity for SO(3,C), is presented. The canonical form of the theory is shown to contain only first…
A deformation of the algebra of diffeomorphisms is constructed for canonically deformed spaces with constant deformation parameter theta. The algebraic relations remain the same, whereas the comultiplication rule (Leibniz rule) is different…
A family of diffeomorphism-invariant Seiberg--Witten deformations of gravity is constructed. In a first step Seiberg--Witten maps for an SO(1,3) gauge symmetry are obtained for constant deformation parameters. This includes maps for the…
A careful study of the induced transformations on spatial quantities due to 4-dimensional spacetime diffeomorphisms in the canonical formulation of general relativity is undertaken. Use of a general formalism, which indicates the role of…
We consider theories describing the dynamics of a four-dimensional metric, whose Lagrangian is diffeomorphism invariant and depends at most on second derivatives of the metric. Imposing degeneracy conditions we find a set of Lagrangians…
In the canonical quantization of gravity in terms of the Ashtekar variables one uses paths in the 3-space to construct the quantum states. Usually, one restricts oneself to families of paths admitting only finite number of isolated…
The recently introduced manifestly covariant canonical quantization scheme is applied to gravity. New diffeomorphism anomalies generating a multi-dimensional generalization of the Virasoro algebra arise. This does not contradict theorems…
Minimally modified gravity theories are modifications of general relativity with two local gravitational degrees of freedom in four dimensions. Their construction relies on the breaking of 4D diffeomorphism invariance keeping however the…
We study the deformation (Moyal) quantisation of gravity in both the ADM and the Ashtekar approach. It is shown, that both can be treated, but lead to anomalies. The anomaly in the case of Ashtekar variables, however, is merely a central…
Two gauge and diffeomorphism invariant theories on the Yang-Mills phase space are studied. They are based on the Lie-algebras $so(1,3)$ and $\widetilde{so(3)}$ -- the loop-algebra of $so(3)$. Although the theories are manifestly real, they…
Modified theories of gravity that explicitly break diffeomorphism invariance have been used for over a decade to explore open issues related to quantum gravity, dark energy, and dark matter. At the same time, the Standard-Model Extension…
General relativity has previously been extended to incorporate degenerate metrics using Ashtekar's hamiltonian formulation of the theory. In this letter, we show that a natural alternative choice for the form of the hamiltonian constraints…
We investigate the $D\rightarrow 4$ limit of the $D$-dimensional Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity, where the limit is taken with $\tilde{\alpha}=(D-4)\, \alpha$ kept fixed and $\alpha$ is the original Gauss-Bonnet coupling. Using the ADM…
We introduce a gauge and diffeomorphism invariant theory on Yang-Mills phase space. The theory is well defined for an arbitrary gauge group with an invariant bilinear form, it contains only first class constraints, and the spacetime metric…
In a previous paper we formulated axisymmetric general relativity in terms of real Ashtekar--Barbero variables. Here we proceed to quantize the theory. We are able to implement Thiemann's version of the Hamiltonian constraint. We discuss…
We show that the constraint algebra of Ashtekar's Hamiltonian formulation of general relativity can be non-trivially deformed by allowing the cosmological constant to become an arbitrary function of the (Weyl) curvature. Our result implies…
We consider the coupling of a scalar field to linearised gravity and derive a relativistic gravitationally induced decoherence model using Ashtekar variables. The model is formulated at the gauge invariant level using suitable geometrical…