Quantum gravity in terms of topological observables

By L. Freidel, A. Starodubtsev. 2005

144 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We recast the action principle of four dimensional General Relativity so that it becomes amenable for perturbation theory which doesn't break general covariance. The coupling constant becomes dimensionless (G_{Newton} \Lambda) and extremely small 10^{-120}. We give an expression for the generating functional of perturbation theory. We show that the partition function of quantum General Relativity can be expressed as an expectation value of a certain topologically invariant observable. This sets up a framework in which quantum gravity can be studied perturbatively using the techniques of topological quantum field theory.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/32b33053866127924c92a64e9363cac73415d915

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Citations in the corpus

MacDowell–Mansouri gravity and Cartan geometry (2006, background): “MacDowell–Mansouri gravity is based on a gauge theory with the gauge group G ⊃ SO(3, 1) depending on the sign of the cosmological constant: G = { SO(4, 1) > 0 SO(3, 2) < 0.”
Quantum gravity, torsion, parity violation, and all that (2005, background): “At the quantum level this is not the case and one expects observable effects associated with a particular microscopic formulation of quantum gravity (such as loop quantum gravity) which contains this parameter [ 6 ], [7].”
Ponzano–Regge model revisited: III. Feynman diagrams and effective field theory (2005, result): “This hope is substantiated by the recent work [ 29 ] which shows a reformulation of 3+1 gravity in terms of a perturbed BF theory where matter coupling to gravity is very similar to the 2+1 gravity case.”