Related papers: Chern--Simons states in spin-network quantum gravi…
We generalize the idea of Vassiliev invariants to the spin network context, with the aim of using these invariants as a kinematical arena for a canonical quantization of gravity. This paper presents a detailed construction of these…
We investigate a triad representation of the Chern-Simons state of quantum gravity with a non-vanishing cosmological constant. It is shown that the Chern-Simons state, which is a well-known exact wavefunctional within the Ashtekar theory,…
We find a consistent formulation of the constraints of Quantum Gravity with a cosmological constant in terms of the Ashtekar new variables in the connection representation, including the existence of a state that is a solution to all the…
We present an extension of general relativity in which the cosmological constant becomes dynamical and turns out to be conjugate to the Chern-Simons invariant of the Ashtekar connection on a spatial slicing. The latter has been proposed in…
We examine the status of the Chern-Simons (or Kodama) state from the point of view of a formulation of gravity that uses only real connection and metric variables and a real action. We may package the {\it real} connection variables into…
Tensor networks prepare states that share many features of states in quantum gravity. However, standard constructions are not diffeomorphism invariant and do not support an algebra of non-commuting area operators. Recently, analogues of…
We develop in a companion article the kinematics of three-dimensional loop quantum gravity in Euclidean signature and with a negative cosmological constant, focusing in particular on the spinorial representation which is well-known at zero…
It is shown that the Chern-Simons functional, built in the spinor representation from the initial data on spacelike hypersurfaces, is invariant with respect to infinitesimal conformal rescalings if and only if the vacuum Einstein equations…
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 Chern-Simons exact solution of four-dimensional quantum gravity with nonvanishing cosmological constant is presented in metric variable as the partition function of a Chern-Simons theory with nontrivial source. The perturbative…
The Chern-Simons approach has been widely used to explain fractional quantum Hall states in the framework of trial wave functions. In the present paper, we generalise the concept of Chern-Simons transformations to systems with any number of…
We represent the two - dimensional planar classical continuous Heisenberg spin model as a constrained Chern-Simons gauged nonlinear Schr\"odinger system. The hamiltonian structure of the model is studied, allowing the quantization of the…
A gauge invariant quantum field theory with a spacetime dependent Chern-Simons coefficient is studied. Using a constraint formalism together with the Schwinger action principle it is shown that non-zero gradients in the coefficient induce…
We propose that the Chern-Simons invariant of the Ashtekar-Sen connection is the natural internal time coordinate for classical and quantum cosmology. The reasons for this are a number of interesting properties of this functional, which we…
An exposition of Vassiliev invariants is given in terms of the simplest approach to the functional integral construction of link invariants from Chern-Simons theory. This approach gives the top row evaluations of Vassiliev invariants for…
The super-Hamiltonian of 4-dimensional gravity as simplified by Ashtekar through the use of gauge potential and densitized triad variables can furthermore be succinctly expressed as a Poisson bracket between the volume element and other…
Dirac's quantization of the (2+1)-dimensional analog of Ashtekar's approach to quantum gravity is investigated. After providing a diffeomorphism-invariant regularization of the Hamiltonian constraint, we find a set of solutions to this…
Chern-Simons theories, which are topological quantum field theories, provide a field theoretic framework for the study of knots and links in three dimensions. These are rare examples of quantum field theories which can be exactly and…
We present a quantization of the Hamiltonian and diffeomorphism constraint of canonical quantum gravity in the spin network representation. The novelty consists in considering a space of wavefunctions based on the Vassiliev knot invariants.…
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…