Related papers: Pretty Good Gravity
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].
Topological gravity is the reduction of Einstein's theory to spacetimes with vanishing curvature, but with global degrees of freedom related to the topology of the universe. We present an exact Hamiltonian lattice theory for topological…
It is argued that quantum gravity has an interpretation as a topological field theory provided a certain constraint from the path intergral measure is respected. The constraint forces us to couple gauge and matter fields to gravity for…
The two-category with three-manifolds as objects, h-cobordisms as morphisms, and diffeomorphisms of these as two-morphisms, is extremely rich; from the point of view of classical physics it defines a nontrivial topological model for general…
Starting from a topological gauge theory in two dimensions with symmetry groups $ISO(2,1)$, $SO(2,1)$ and $SO(1,2)$ we construct a model for gravity with non-trivial coupling to matter. We discuss the equations of motion which are connected…
We construct a topological field theory which, on the one hand, generalizes BF theories in that there is non-trivial coupling to `topological matter fields'; and, on the other, generalizes the three-dimensional model of Carlip and Gegenberg…
The physics of quantum gravity is discussed within the framework of topological quantum field theory. Some of the principles are illustrated with examples taken from theories in which space-time is three dimensional.
In an odd-dimensional spacetime, gravity can be formulated as a proper gauge theory based on the Chern-Simons action for a suitable gauge group. Performing dimensional reduction, one obtains, as an effective theory, Chamseddine's…
The holographic dual of a gravitational theory around the de Sitter background is argued to be a Euclidean conformal gravity theory in one fewer dimensions. The measure for the holographic theory naturally includes a sum over topologies as…
Topological gravity is the reduction of general relativity to flat space-times. A lattice model describing topological gravity is developed starting from a Hamiltonian lattice version of $B\w F$ theory. The extra symmetries not present in…
A stochastic theory of gravity is described in which the metric tensor is a random variable such that the spacetime manifold is a fluctuating physical system at a certain length scale. A general formalism is described for calculating…
In this paper, we examine the analogy between topological string theory and equivariant cohomology. We also show that the equivariant cohomology of a topological conformal field theory carries a certain algebraic structure, which we call a…
String backgrounds are described as purely geometric objects related to moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces, in the spirit of Segal's definition of a conformal field theory. Relations with conformal field theory, topological field theory and…
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…
A classical two dimensional theory of gravity which has a number of interesting features (including a Newtonian limit, black holes and gravitational collapse) is quantized using conformal field theoretic techniques. The critical dimension…
Four-dimensional gravity admits many equivalent formulations - metric, Einstein-Cartan, teleparallel, McDowell-Mansouri, among others - each offering distinct advantages, particularly, in view of quantization. We propose a new formulation…
We make it precise what it means to have a connection with torsion as solution of the Einstein equations. While locally the theory remains the same, the new formulation allows for topologies that would have been excluded in the standard…
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 geometrical nature of gravity emerges from the universality dictated by the equivalence principle. In the usual formulation of General Relativity, the geometrisation of the gravitational interaction is performed in terms of the…
After a brief review of topological gravity, we present a superspace approach to this theory. This formulation allows us to recover in a natural manner various known results and to gain some insight into the precise relationship between…