Related papers: Nonperturbative sum over topologies in 2D Lorentzi…
We review selected aspects of unimodular gravity and we discuss its viability as a solution of the old cosmological constant problem. In unimodular gravity the cosmological constant is promoted to a global degree of freedom. We highlight…
The problem of topology change transitions in quantum gravity is discussed. We argue that the contribution of the Giddings-Strominger wormhole to the Euclidean path integral is pure imaginary. This is checked by two techniques: by the…
We investigate, in the framework of (2+1) dimensional gravity, stationary, rotationally symmetric gravitational sources of the perfect fluid type, embedded in a space of arbitrary cosmological constant. We show that the matching conditions…
We study the Factorization Paradox from the bottom up by adapting methods from perturbative renormalization. Just as quantum field theories are plagued with loop divergences that need to be cancelled systematically by introducing…
Lorentzian quantum gravity is believed to cure the pathologies encountered in Euclidean quantum gravity, such as the conformal factor problem. We show that this is the case for the Lorentzian Regge path integral expanded around a flat…
Asymptotic safety describes a scenario in which general relativity can be quantized as a conventional field theory, despite being nonrenormalizable when expanding it around a fixed background geometry. It is formulated in the framework of…
We obtain a general class of exact solutions to topologically massive gravity with or without a negative cosmological constant. In the first case, we show that the solution is supersymmetric and asymptotically approaches the extremal BTZ…
Classically, unimodular gravity is known to be equivalent to General Relativity (GR), except for the fact that the effective cosmological constant $\Lambda$ has the status of an integration constant. Here, we explore various formulations of…
Extensions of the gravity theory in order to obtain traceless field equations have been widely considered in the literature. The leading example of such class of theories is the unimodular gravity, but there are other possibilities like the…
An important task faced by all approaches of quantum gravity is to incorporate superpositions and quantify quantum uncertainties of spacetime causal relations. We address this task in 2D. By identifying a global $Z_2$ symmetry of 1+1D…
We show that there are 2 equivalent first order descriptions of 2+1 gravity with non-zero cosmological constant. One is the well-known spacetime description and the other is in terms of evolving conformal geometry. The key tool that links…
We study the constraints coming from local causality requirement in various $2+1$ dimensional dynamical theories of gravity. In topologically massive gravity, with a single parity non-invariant massive degree of freedom, and in new massive…
In this paper, we construct the first analytic examples of (3+1)-dimensional self-gravitating regular cosmic tube solutions which are superconducting, free of curvature singularities and with non-trivial topological charge in the…
We apply a recent proposal to define "gravitational entropy" to the expansion of cosmic voids within the framework of non-perturbative General Relativity. By considering CDM void configurations compatible with basic observational…
We compute the path integral of three-dimensional gravity with negative cosmological constant on spaces which are topologically a torus times an interval. These are Euclidean wormholes, which smoothly interpolate between two asymptotically…
Causal Dynamical Triangulations in four dimensions provide a background-independent definition of the sum over geometries in nonperturbative quantum gravity, with a positive cosmological constant. We present evidence that a macroscopic…
Recently Gambini and Pullin proposed a new consistent discrete approach to quantum gravity and applied it to cosmological models. One remarkable result of this approach is that the cosmological singularity can be avoided in a general…
We investigate a three-dimensional gravitational theory on a noncommutative space which has a cosmological constant term only. We found various kinds of nontrivial solutions, by applying a similar technique which was used to seek…
We review a recently discovered continuum limit for the one-matrix model which describes "causal" two-dimensional quantum gravity. The behaviour of the quantum geometry in this limit is different from the quantum geometry of Euclidean…
Borrowing techniques from cosmology, I compute the power spectrum of quantum fluctuations in (2+1)-dimensional causal dynamical triangulations, a promising discrete path integral approach to quantum gravity. The results agree with those of…