Related papers: Spinfoam models for M-theory
In the quest of a physical theory of quantum gravity, spin foam models, or in short spinfoams, propose a well-defined path integral summing over quantized discrete space-time geometries. At the crossroad of topological quantum field theory,…
It has been recently shown that a certain non-topological spin foam model can be obtained from the Feynman expansion of a field theory over a group. The field theory defines a natural ``sum over triangulations'', which removes the cut off…
Spin foam models are a new approach to a formulation of quantum gravity which is fully background independent, non-perturbative, and covariant, in the spirit of path integral formulations of quantum field theory. In this thesis we describe…
We describe how a spin-foam state sum model can be reformulated as a quantum field theory of spin networks, such that the Feynman diagrams of that field theory are the spin-foam amplitudes. In the case of open spin networks, we obtain a new…
We study perturbation theory for spin foam models on triangulated manifolds. Starting with any model of this sort, we consider an arbitrary perturbation of the vertex amplitudes, and write the evolution operators of the perturbed model as…
Loop quantum gravity has provided us with a canonical framework especially devised for background independent and diffeomorphism invariant gauge field theories. In this quantization the fundamental excitations are called spin network…
Spin foam models, loop quantum gravity and group field theory are discussed as quantum gravity candidate theories and usually involve a continuous Lie group. We advocate here to consider quantum gravity inspired models with finite groups,…
The spinfoam framework is a proposal for a regularized path integral for quantum gravity. Spinfoams define quantum space-time structures describing the evolution in time of the spin network states for quantum geometry derived from Loop…
We extend the formalism of embedded spin networks and spin foams to include topological data that encode the underlying three-manifold or four-manifold as a branched cover. These data are expressed as monodromies, in a way similar to the…
In loop quantum gravity we now have a clear picture of the quantum geometry of space, thanks in part to the theory of spin networks. The concept of `spin foam' is intended to serve as a similar picture for the quantum geometry of spacetime.…
We propose a new systematic approach that allows one to derive the spin foam (state sum) model of a theory starting from the corresponding classical action functional. It can be applied to any theory whose action can be written as that of…
We present an introduction to Group Field Theory models, motivating them on the basis of their relationship with discretized BF models of gravity. We derive the Feynmann rules and compute quantum corrections in the coherent states basis.
Current theories of particle physics, including the standard model, are dominated by the paradigm that nature is basically translation invariant. Deviations from translation invariance are described by the action of forces. General…
Spin foam vertex amplitudes are the key ingredient of spin foam models for quantum gravity. These fall into the realm of discretized path integral, and can be seen as generalized lattice gauge theories. They can be seen as an attempt at a…
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…
In this article we review the present status of the spin foam formulation of non-perturbative (background independent) quantum gravity. The article is divided in two parts. In the first part we present a general introduction to the main…
While the use of spin networks has greatly improved our understanding of the kinematical aspects of quantum gravity, the dynamical aspects remain obscure. To address this problem, we define the concept of a `spin foam' going from one spin…
We give a general definition of spin foam models, and then of models of 4d quantum gravity based on constraining BF theory. We highlight the construction and quantization ambiguities entering model building, among which the choice of…
Group field theories are particular quantum field theories defined on D copies of a group which reproduce spin foam amplitudes on a space-time of dimension D. In these lecture notes, we present the general construction of group field…
Spin-foam models are hoped to provide a dynamics for loop quantum gravity. These start from the Plebanski formulation of gravity, in which gravity is obtained from a topological field theory, BF theory, through constraints, which, however,…