Statistical geometry of random weave states

I describe the first steps in the construction of semiclassical states for non-perturbative canonical quantum gravity using ideas from classical, Riemannian statistical geometry and results from quantum geometry of spin network states. In particular, I concentrate on how those techniques are applied to the construction of random spin networks, and the calculation of their contribution to areas and volumes.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX, submitted to the Proceedings of the IX Marcel Grossmann Meeting, Rome, July 2-8, 200

Semiclassical States for Constrained Systems

The notion of semi-classical states is first sharpened by clarifying two issues that appear to have been overlooked in the literature. Systems with linear and quadratic constraints are then considered and the group averaging procedure is applied to kinematical coherent states to obtain physical semi-classical states. In the specific examples considered, the technique turns out to be surprisingly efficient, suggesting that it may well be possible to use kinematical structures to analyze the semi-classical behavior of physical states of an interesting class of constrained systems.Comment: 27 pages, 3 figures. V2 discussion expanded. Final version to be published in PR

Chaos in Robertson-Walker Cosmology

Chaos in Robertson-Walker cosmological models where gravity is coupled to one or more scalar fields has been studied by a few authors, mostly using numerical simulations. In this paper we begin a systematic study of the analytical aspect. We consider one conformally coupled scalar field and, using the fact that the model is integrable when the field is massless, we show in detail how homoclinic chaos arises for nonzero masses using a perturbative method.Comment: 16 pages, Tex, no figures. Minor changes have been added. To appear in Journal of Mathematical Physic

Gravity and Matter in Causal Set Theory

The goal of this paper is to propose an approach to the formulation of dynamics for causal sets and coupled matter fields. We start from the continuum version of the action for a Klein-Gordon field coupled to gravity, and rewrite it first using quantities that have a direct correspondent in the case of a causal set, namely volumes, causal relations, and timelike lengths, as variables to describe the geometry. In this step, the local Lagrangian density $L(f;x)$ for a set of fields $f$ is recast into a quasilocal expression $L_0(f;p,q)$ that depends on pairs of causally related points $p \prec q$ and is a function of the values of $f$ in the Alexandrov set defined by those points, and whose limit as $p$ and $q$ approach a common point $x$ is $L(f;x)$. We then describe how to discretize $L_0(f;p,q)$, and use it to define a discrete action.Comment: 13 pages, no figures; In version 2, friendlier results than in version 1 are obtained following much shorter derivation

Path length distribution in two-dimensional causal sets

We study the distribution of maximal-chain lengths between two elements of a causal set and its relationship with the embeddability of the causal set in a region of flat spacetime. We start with causal sets obtained from uniformly distributed points in Minkowski space. After some general considerations we focus on the 2-dimensional case and derive a recursion relation for the expected number of maximal chains $n_k$ as a function of their length $k$ and the total number of points $N$ between the maximal and minimal elements. By studying these theoretical distributions as well as ones generated from simulated sprinklings in Minkowski space we identify two features, the most probable path length or peak of the distribution $k_0$ and its width $\Delta$, which can be used both to provide a measure of the embeddability of the causal set as a uniform distribution of points in Minkowski space and to determine its dimensionality, if the causal set is manifoldlike in that sense. We end with a few simple examples of $n_k$ distributions for non-manifoldlike causal sets.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure

Statistical Lorentzian geometry and the closeness of Lorentzian manifolds

I introduce a family of closeness functions between causal Lorentzian geometries of finite volume and arbitrary underlying topology. When points are randomly scattered in a Lorentzian manifold, with uniform density according to the volume element, some information on the topology and metric is encoded in the partial order that the causal structure induces among those points; one can then define closeness between Lorentzian geometries by comparing the sets of probabilities they give for obtaining the same posets. If the density of points is finite, one gets a pseudo-distance, which only compares the manifolds down to a finite volume scale, as illustrated here by a fully worked out example of two 2-dimensional manifolds of different topology; if the density is allowed to become infinite, a true distance can be defined on the space of all Lorentzian geometries. The introductory and concluding sections include some remarks on the motivation for this definition and its applications to quantum gravity.Comment: Plain TeX, 19 pages + 3 figures, revised version for publication in J.Math.Phys., significantly improved conten