Related papers: Topological Aspects of Quantum Gravity
We consider two-dimensional quantum gravity coupled to matter fields which are renormalizable, but not conformal invariant. Questions concerning the $\b$ function and the effective action are addressed, and the effective action and the…
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…
The preceding talks given at this conference have dealt mainly with general ideas for, main problems of and techniques for the task of quantizing gravity canonically. Since one of the major motivations to arrange for this meeting was that…
This thesis discusses various aspects of duality in quantum field theory and string theory. In the first part we consider duality in topological quantum field theories, concentrating on the Donaldson and Seiberg-Witten theories as (dual)…
Differential geometric formulation of quantum gauge theory of gravity is studied in this paper. The quantum gauge theory of gravity which is proposed in the references hep-th/0109145 and hep-th/0112062 is formulated completely in the…
10 D Euclidean quantum gravity is investigated numerically using the dynamical triangulation approach. It has been found that the behavior of the model is similar to that of the lower dimensional models. However, it turns out that there are…
In this thesis we study two different approaches to holography, and comment on the possible relation between them. The first approach is an analysis of the high-energy regime of quantum gravity in the eikonal approximation, where the theory…
Some approaches to $2d$ gravity developed for the last years are reviewed. They are physical (Liouville) gravity, topological theories and matrix models. A special attention is paid to matrix models and their interrelations with different…
After a long technical and consequently philosophical disgression about the necessity of the construction presented in this book, a logically consistent and precise theory of quantum gravity is presented. The construction of this theory…
Quantization of the gravity remains one of the most important, yet extremely illusive, challenges at the heart of modern physics. Any attempt to resolve this long-standing problem seems to be doomed, as the route to any direct empirical…
Certain topological invariants of the moduli space of gravitational instantons are defined and studied. Several amplitudes of two and four dimensional topological gravity are computed. A notion of puncture in four dimensions, that is…
In this thesis we analyze a very simple model of two dimensional quantum gravity based on causal dynamical triangulations (CDT). We present an exactly solvable model which indicates that it is possible to incorporate spatial topology…
We develop a new perspective on the discretization of the phase space structure of gravity in 2+1 dimensions as a piecewise-flat geometry in 2 spatial dimensions. Starting from a subdivision of the continuum geometric and phase space…
This is an introduction to the group field theory approach to quantum gravity, with emphasis on motivations and basic formalism, more than on recent results; we elaborate on the various ingredients, both conceptual and formal, of the…
Loop Quantum Gravity provides a natural truncation of the infinite degrees of freedom of gravity, obtained by studying the theory on a given finite graph. We review this procedure and we present the construction of the canonical theory on a…
A central aspect of the cosmological constant problem is to understand why vacuum energy does not gravitate. In order to account for this observation, while allowing for nontrivial dynamics of the quantum vacuum, we motivate a novel…
Recent work by physicists on gravity in two dimensions has a natural generalization to four dimensions, formulated in terms of an analogue of Segal's category [defined for the study of conformal field theory].
An infinite number of topological conformal algebras with varying central charges are explicitly shown to be present in $2d$ gravity (treated both in the conformal gauge and in the light-cone gauge) coupled to minimal matter. The central…
In this talk I review some of the recent developments in the field of random surfaces and the Dynamical Triangulation approach to simplicial quantum gravity. In two dimensions I focus on the c=1 barrier and the fractal dimension of…
A very brief review is given of the current state of research in quantum gravity. Over the past fifteen years, two approaches have emerged as the most promising paths to a quantum theory of gravity: string theory and quantum geometry. I…