Related papers: Wilson loops in four-dimensional quantum gravity
In Euclidean four-dimensional SU(N) pure gauge theory, eigenvalue distributions of Wilson loop parallel transport matrices around closed spacetime curves show non-analytic behavior (a 'large-N phase transition') at a critical size of the…
Conventional non-Abelian SO(4) gauge theory is able to describe gravity provided the gauge field possesses a specific polarized vacuum state in which the instantons have a preferred orientation. Their orientation plays the role of the order…
We reconsider a gauge theory of gravity in which the gauge group is the conformal group SO(4,2) and the action is of the Yang-Mills form, quadratic in the curvature. The resulting gravitational theory exhibits local conformal symmetry and…
I present a model of discrete gravity, which is formulated in terms of a topological gauge theory with defects. The theory has no local degrees of freedom and the gravitational field is trivial everywhere except at a number of colliding…
A five-dimensional Chern-Simons gravity theory based on the anti-de Sitter group SO(4,2) is argued to be a useful model in which to understand the details of holography and the relationship between generally covariant and dual local quantum…
Motivated by the development of on-going optomechanical experiments aimed at constraining non-local effects inspired by some quantum gravity scenarios, the Hamiltonian formulation of a non-local harmonic oscillator, and its coupling to a…
A model of 3+1 dimensional gravity with negative cosmological constant coupled to abelian gauge fields has been proposed as a gravity dual for Lifshitz like critical phenomena in 2+1 dimensions. The finite temperature behavior is described…
We provide a complete quantization for the Gowdy model with local rotational symmetry in vacuum. We start with a redefinition of the classical constraint algebra such that the Hamiltonian constraint has a vanishing Poisson bracket with…
We develop a Hamiltonian formalism suitable to be applied to gauge theories in the presence of Gravitation, and to Gravity itself when considered as a gauge theory. It is based on a nonlinear realization of the Poincar\'e group, taken as…
These notes are a didactic overview of the non perturbative and background independent approach to a quantum theory of gravity known as loop quantum gravity. The definition of real connection variables for general relativity, used as a…
Group field theories whose Feynman diagrams describe 3d gravity with a varying configuration of Wilson loop observables and 3d gravity with volume observables at each vertex are defined. The volume observables are created by the usual spin…
We discuss the action of the configuration operators of loop quantum gravity. In particular, we derive the generalised eigenbasis for the Wilson loop operator and show that the transformation between this basis and the spin-network basis is…
We obtain concise analytic formulae for Wilson loops computed on special n-point polygonal contours through two-loops in weakly coupled N=4 supersymmetric gauge theory. The contours we consider can be embedded into a (1+1)-dimensional…
Wilson loops in gauge theories pose a fundamental challenge for dualities. Wilson loops are labeled by a representation of the gauge group and should map under duality to loop operators labeled by the same data, yet generically, dual…
Lovelock gravity is a class of higher-derivative gravitational theories whose linearized equations of motion have no more than two time derivatives. Here, it is shown that any Lovelock theory can be effectively described as Einstein gravity…
Gravity is uniquely situated in between classical topological field theories and standard local field theories. This can be seen in the the quasi-local nature of gravitational observables, but is nowhere more apparent than in gravity's…
In the minimal formulation of gravity with Lifshitz-type anisotropic scaling, the gauge symmetries of the system are foliation-preserving diffeomorphisms of spacetime. Consequently, compared to general relativity, the spectrum contains an…
We consider a model of Quantum Gravity phenomenology, based on the idea that space-time may have some unknown granular structure that respects the Lorentz symmetry. The proposal involves non-trivial couplings of curvature to matter fields…
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…
Physical properties of the quantum gravitational vacuum state are explored by solving a lattice version of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. The constraint of diffeomorphism invariance is strong enough to uniquely determine the structure of the…