Related papers: Is Loop Quantum Gravity a QFT ?
Over the past five years, there has been significant progress on the problem of quantization of diffeomorphism covariant field theories with {\it local} degrees of freedom. The absence of a background space-time metric in these theories…
Loop Quantum Gravity defines the quantum states of space geometry as spin networks and describes their evolution in time. We reformulate spin networks in terms of harmonic oscillators and show how the holographic degrees of freedom of the…
We study a model for quantum gravity on a circle in which the notion of a classical metric tensor is replaced by a quantum metric with an inhomogeneous transformation law under diffeomorphisms. This transformation law corresponds to the…
We construct the operator that projects on the physical states in loop quantum gravity. To this aim, we consider a diffeomorphism invariant functional integral over scalar functions. The construction defines a covariant, Feynman-like,…
We show how Feynman amplitudes of standard QFT on flat and homogeneous space can naturally be recast as the evaluation of observables for a specific spin foam model, which provides dynamics for the background geometry. We identify the…
A new representation of Quantum Gravity is developed. This formulation is based on an extension of the group of loops. The enlarged group, that we call the Extended Loop Group, behaves locally as an infinite dimensional Lie group. Quantum…
We postulate that the fundamental principles of Quantum Gravity are diffeomorphism symmetry, unitarity, and locality. Local observables are compatible with diffeomorphism symmetry in the presence of diff anomalies, which modify the symmetry…
As a toy model for the implementation of the diffeomorphism constraint, the interpretation of the resulting states, and the treatment of ordering ambiguities in loop quantum gravity, we consider the Hilbert space of spatially diffeomorphism…
In the presence of spacetime boundaries, diffeomorphisms in gravitational theories can become physical and acquire non-vanishing Noether charges. These charges obey an algebra which, within the extended phase-space formalism, faithfully…
Quantum general relativity may be considered as generally covariant QFT on differentiable manifolds, without any a priori metric structure. The kinematically covariance group acts by general diffeomorphisms on the manifold and by…
We define a modification of LQG in which graphs are required to consist in piecewise linear edges, which we call piecewise linear LQG (plLQG). At the diffeomorphism invariant level, we prove that plLQG is equivalent to standard LQG, as long…
The canonical quantization of diffeomorphism invariant theories of connections in terms of loop variables is revisited. Such theories include general relativity described in terms of Ashtekar-Barbero variables and extension to Yang-Mills…
Boundary conditions play a crucial role in the path-integral approach to quantum gravity and quantum cosmology, as well as in the current attempts to understand the one-loop semiclassical properties of quantum field theories. Within this…
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 extend the recently developed kinematical framework for diffeomorphism invariant theories of connections for compact gauge groups to the case of a diffeomorphism invariant quantum field theory which includes besides connections also…
We give a standard introduction to loop quantum gravity, from the ADM variables to spin network states. We include a discussion on quantum geometry on a fixed graph and its relation to a discrete approximation of general relativity.
We study the quantization of spherically symmetric vacuum spacetimes within loop quantum gravity. In particular, we give additional details about our previous work in which we showed that one could complete the quantization the model and…
We present a separable version of Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) based on an inductive system of cubic lattices. We construct semi-classical states for which the LQG operators -- the flux, the area and the volume operators -- have the right…
In quantum gravity, one looks for alternative structures to spacetime physics than ordinary real manifolds. Here, we propose an alternative universal construction containing the latter as an equilibrium state under the action of the…
Quantum Field Theory (QFT) represents a vast generalization of Quantum Mechanics (QM), as it deals with systems that have an infinite number of degrees of freedom. The Stone-von Neumann theorem, which establishes the equivalence of…