Related papers: On the relation between Euclidean and Lorentzian 2…
We reconsider the Coleman's mechanism that solves the Cosmological Constant Problem by the baby universes. We use the Lorentzian path integral and allow each universe has a different effective field theory and a vacuum. By using the…
We provide a concise approach to generalized dilaton theories with and without torsion and coupling to Yang-Mills fields. Transformations on the space of fields are used to trivialize the field equations locally. In this way their solution…
We study point particles in 2+1 dimensional first order gravity using a triangulation to fix the connection and frame-field. The Hamiltonian is reduced to a boundary term which yields the total mass. The triangulation is dynamical with…
In a recent paper, we introduced a new discretization scheme for gravity in 2+1 dimensions. Starting from the continuum theory, this new scheme allowed us to rigorously obtain the discrete phase space of loop gravity, coupled to…
Suppose the usual description of spacetime as a 4-dimensional manifold with a Lorentzian metric breaks down at Planck energies. Can we still construct sensible theoretical models of the universe? Are they testable? Do they lead to a…
We construct an effective cosmological spin-foam model for a (2+1) dimensional spatially flat universe, discretized on a hypercubical lattice, containing both space- and time-like regions. Our starting point is the recently proposed…
We discuss the renormalizability of quantum gravity near two dimensions based on the results obtained by a computation of the BRST-antibracket cohomology in the space of local functionals of the fields and antifields. We justify the…
In quantum systems with many degrees of freedom the replica method is a useful tool to study the entanglement of arbitrary spatial regions. We apply it in a way which allows them to back-react. As a consequence, they become dynamical…
We advocate lattice methods as the tool of choice to constructively define a background-independent theory of Lorentzian quantum gravity and explore its physical properties in the Planckian regime. The formulation that arguably has most…
We explore an extended coupling constant space of 4d regularized Euclidean quantum gravity, defined via the formalism of dynamical triangulations. We add a measure term which can also serve as a generalized higher curvature term and…
The algebra dual to Woronowicz's deformation of the 2-\-di\-men\-sion\-al Euclidean group is constructed. The same algebra is obtained from $SU_{q}(2)$ via contraction on both the group and algebra levels.
We study codimension-two spacelike submanifolds in Lorentzian spacetimes that admit umbilical lightlike normal directions. We show that such submanifolds are subject to strong geometric and topological constraints, establishing explicit…
Loop quantum cosmology(LQC) is the symmetric model of loop quantum gravity. In this paper, we generalize the structure of loop quantum cosmology to the theories with arbitrary spacetime dimensions. The isotropic and homogenous cosmological…
Two-dimensional quantum gravity with an $R^2$ term is investigated in the continuum framework. It is shown that the partition function for small area $A$ is highly suppressed by an exponential factor $exp \{ -2\pi (1-h)^2/(m^2A) \}$, where…
Some aspects of lightlike dimensional reduction in flat spacetime are studied with emphasis to classical applications. Among them the Galilean transformation of shadows induced by inertial frame changes is studied in detail by proving that,…
We formulate quantum field theory in triangulated spacetime using compositional quantum field theory and tensor network methods. We show that gravitational interactions emerge as a low-energy effective phenomenon in this framework. For…
It is well-known that the sum over topologies in quantum gravity is ill-defined, due to a super-exponential growth of the number of geometries as a function of the space-time volume, leading to a badly divergent gravitational path integral.…
The causality structure of two-dimensional manifolds with degenerate metrics is analysed in terms of global solutions of the massless wave equation. Certain novel features emerge. Despite the absence of a traditional Lorentzian Cauchy…
The two-dimensional theory of gravity describing a graviton-dilaton system is considered. The graviton-dilaton coupling can be fixed such that the quantum theory remains free of the conformal anomaly for any conformal dimension of the…
There are not many tools to quantitatively monitor the emergence of classical geometric features from a quantum spacetime, whose microscopic structure may be a highly quantum-fluctuating "spacetime foam". To improve this situation, we…