Related papers: Gauge Theories for Gravity on a Line
The evolution of a generally covariant theory is under-determined. One hundred years ago such dynamics had never before been considered; its ramifications were perplexing, its future important role for all the fundamental interactions under…
The process launched by Lobachevsky. The movement of the Kazan school of geometry towards physics. Personal memories of Alexei Zinovievich Petrov, the great Kazan geometer and theoretical physicist, who became the Author's Guiding Star.…
It is shown that the two dimensional gravity, described either in the conformal gauge (the Liouville theory) or in the light cone gauge, when coupled to matter possesses an infinite number of twisted $N=2$ superconformal symmetries. The…
This review contains a summary of work by J.-L. Gervais and the author on the operator approach to 2d gravity. Special emphasis is placed on the construction of local observables -the Liouville exponentials and the Liouville field itself -…
After briefly reviewing the hamiltonian approach to 2+1 dimensional gravity in absence of matter on closed universes, we consider 2+1 dimensional gravity coupled to point particles in an open universe. We show that the hamiltonian structure…
The Liouville action emerges as the effective action of 2-d gravity in the process of path integral quantization of the bosonic string. It yields a measure of the violation of classical symmetries of the theory at the quantum level. Certain…
In general terms duality consists of two descriptions of one physical system by using degrees of freedom of different nature. There are different kinds of dualities and they have been extremely useful to uncover the underlying strong…
I describe parts of my joint work with S. Deser [March 19, 1931 - April 21, 2023] which started when I was working as a post-doc at Brandeis University in 2001. Our work was mostly, but not exclusively, on conserved charges of higher…
A new approach to quantize the gravitational field is presented. It is based on the observation that the quantum character of matter becomes more significant as one gets closer to the big bang. As the metric loses its meaning, it makes…
To celebrate Roman Jackiw's 80th birthday, herewith some comments on gravity and gauge theory models in D=3, the chief focus of many of our joint efforts.
These personal reminiscences of the great Russian mathematician Sergey K. Godunov (1929-2023) arose from a request by his daughter, Ekaterina, to contribute a piece to a book she is writing about her father's life. I was honoured to accept…
This is a shortened version of an invited talk at the XIII International Workshop "Lie Theory and its Applications in Physics", June 17-23, Varna, Bulgaria. A covariant canonical gauge theory of gravity free from torsion is studied. Using a…
A new formulation of $c\leq 1$ matter coupled to 2D gravity is proposed. This model, being closely analogous to one in the Polyakov light-cone gauge, possesses well defined global properties which allow to calculate correlation functions.…
The article presents a compact review of the analytical results (2002-2009) in the study of the system describing the motion of a top in two constant fields. The Liouville integrability of this system under certain condition of the…
The interaction of matter with gravity in two dimensional spacetimes can be supplemented with a geometrical force analogous to a Lorentz force produced on a surface by a constant perpendicular magnetic field. In the special case of constant…
The advent of general relativity settled it once and for all that a theory of spacetime is inextricably linked to the theory of gravity. From the point of view of the gauge principle of Weyl and Yang-Mills-Utiyama, it became manifest around…
We briefly recount the long friendship that developed between Ludwig and us (Moshe Flato and I), since we first met at ICM 1966 in Moscow. That friendship extended to his school and family, and persists to this day. Its strong personal…
Ever since E.Cartan in the 1920s enriched the geometric framework of general relativity (GR) by introducing a {\it torsion} of spacetime, the question arose whether one could find a measurement technique for detecting the presence of a…
The dynamics of Liouville fields coupled to gravity are investigated by applying the principle of general covariance to the Liouville action in the context of a particular form of two-dimensional dilaton gravity. The resultant field…
We discuss an experiment conducted by Nesvizhevsky et al. As it is the first experiment claimed to have observed gravitational quantum states, it is imperative to investigate all alternative explanations of the result. In a student project…