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We investigate the possibility that a background independent quantum theory of gravity is not a theory of quantum geometry. We provide a way for global spacetime symmetries to emerge from a background independent theory without geometry. In…
This is an introduction to spin foam models for non-perturbative quantum gravity, an approach that lies at the point of convergence of many different research areas, including loop quantum gravity, topological quantum field theories, path…
Introductory lectures on higher-spin gauge theory given at 7 Aegean workshop on non-Einstein theories of gravity. The emphasis is on qualitative features of the higher-spin gauge theory and peculiarities of its space-time interpretation. In…
Physical spacetime geometry follows from some effective thermodynamics of quantum states of all fields and particles described in frames of General Relativity. In the sense of pure field theoretical Einstein's point of view on gravitation…
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…
The theory of quantum gravity is aimed to fuse general relativity with quantum theory into a more fundamental framework. The space of quantum gravity provides both the non-fixed causality of general relativity and the quantum uncertainty of…
The fact that quantum theory is non-differentiable, while general relativity is built on the assumption of differentiability sources an incompatibility between quantum theory and gravity. Higher order geometry addresses this issue directly…
A surface theoretic view of non-perturbative quantum gravity as "spin-foams" was proposed by Baez. A possibility of constructing such a model was studied some time ago based on (2+1) dimensional general relativity as a reformulation of the…
We introduce a new model of background independent physics in which the degrees of freedom live on a complete graph and the physics is invariant under the permutations of all the points. We argue that the model has a low energy phase in…
The problem of finding the quantum theory of the gravitational field, and thus understanding what is quantum spacetime, is still open. One of the most active of the current approaches is loop quantum gravity. Loop quantum gravity is a…
We study the problem of interacting theories with (partially)-massless and conformal higher spin fields without matter in three dimensions. A new class of theories that have partially-massless fields is found, which significantly extends…
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…
The physics of quantum gravity is discussed within the framework of topological quantum field theory. Some of the principles are illustrated with examples taken from theories in which space-time is three dimensional.
Any canonical quantum theory can be understood to arise from the compatibility of the statistical geometry of distinguishable observations with the canonical Poisson structure of Hamiltonian dynamics. This geometric perspective offers a…
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 problem of background independent quantum gravity is the problem of defining a quantum field theory of matter and gravity in the absence of an underlying background geometry. Loop quantum gravity (LQG) is a promising proposal for…
We highlight the fact that the lack of scale invariance in the gravitational field equations of General Relativity results from the underlying assumption that the appropriate scale for the gravitational force should be linked to the atomic…
Starting from a new understanding of the vacuum energy problem based on the combination of the phase space regularization and the holographic bound, we argue that quantum gravity should be understood as gravitized quantum theory, that is,…
It is argued that quantum gravity has an interpretation as a topological field theory provided a certain constraint from the path intergral measure is respected. The constraint forces us to couple gauge and matter fields to gravity for…
One of the biggest challenges to theoretical physics of our time is to find a background-independent quantum theory of gravity. Today one encounters a profusion of different attempts at quantization, but no fully accepted - or acceptable,…