Related papers: Spin Foam Models of String Theory
String theory is the leading contemporary framework to explore the synthesis of quantum mechanics with gravity. String phenomenology aims to study string theory while maintaining contact with observational data. The fermionic $Z_2\times…
We return to our study \cite{BEH} of invariant spin fields and spin tunes for polarized beams in storage rings but in contrast to the continuous-time treatment in \cite{BEH}, we now employ a discrete-time formalism, beginning with the…
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…
We study the issue of coupling among 4-simplices in the context of spin foam models obtained from a group field theory formalism. We construct a generalisation of the Barrett-Crane model in which an additional coupling between the normals…
We construct a model for the string group as an infinite-dimensional Lie group. In a second step we extend this model by a contractible Lie group to a Lie 2-group model. To this end we need to establish some facts on the homotopy theory of…
We give a very brief introduction to the group field theory approach to quantum gravity, a generalisation of matrix models for 2-dimensional quantum gravity to higher dimension, that has emerged recently from research in spin foam models.
The spin can be described in the star product formalism by extending the bosonic Moyal product in the fermionic sector. The fermionic star product is then the Clifford product of geometric algebra and it is possible to formulate the…
Classically, a spin structure on the loop space of a manifold is a lift of the structure group of the looped frame bundle from the loop group to its universal central extension. Heuristically, the loop space of a manifold is spin if and…
We develop general techniques for computing the fundamental group of the configuration space of $n$ identical particles, possessing a generic internal structure, moving on a manifold $M$. This group generalizes the $n$-string braid group of…
String geometry theory is one of the candidates of the non-perturbative formulation of string theory. In this paper, from the closed bosonic sector of string geometry theory, we derive path integrals of all order perturbative strings on all…
The Feynman Path Integral is extended in order to capture all solutions of a quantum field theory. This is done via a choice of appropriate integration cycles, parametrized by M in SL(2,C), i.e., the space of allowed integration cycles is…
We summarize the main results of our recent investigation of bundles of real Clifford modules and briefly touch on some applications to string theory and supergravity.
In quantum field theory, an orbifold is a way to obtain a new theory from an old one by gauging a finite global symmetry. This definition of orbifold does not make sense for quantum gravity theories, that admit (conjecturally) no global…
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 path integral representation for a system of N non-relativistic particles on the plane, interacting through a Chern-Simons gauge field, is obtained from the operator formalism. An effective interaction between the particles appears,…
We show that the Husain-Kuchar model can be described in the framework of BF theories. This is a first step towards its quantization by standard perturbative QFT techniques or the spin-foam formalism introduced in the space-time description…
We describe how to construct and compute unambiguously path integrals for particles moving in a curved space, and how these path integrals can be used to calculate Feynman graphs and effective actions for various quantum field theories with…
The most common spin foam models of gravity are widely believed to be discrete path integral quantizations of the Plebanski action. However, their derivation in present formulations is incomplete and lower dimensional simplex amplitudes are…
3-dimensional BF theory with gauge group $G$ (= Chern-Simons theory with non-compact gauge group $TG$) is a deceptively simple yet subtle topological gauge theory. Formally, its partition function is a sum/integral over the moduli space…
Spin foams provide path integrals for quantum gravity, which employ discretizations as regulator. To obtain regulator independent predictions, we must remove these fiducial structures in a suitable refinement limit. In this chapter we…