From sl(2) Kirby weight systems to the asymptotic 3-manifold invariant

We give a construction of Kirby weight systems associated to sl(2) and valued into the finite field Z/pZ. We show that it is possible to apply this sequence of weight systems on the universal invariant of framed link. We also show that the corresponding sequence admits a Fermat limit, which defines an asymptotic rational homology 3-sphere quantum invariant. Moreover, this asymptotic invariant coincides with the Ohtsuki invariant.Comment: 27 pages, 19 figures, added reference

Gravitational Energy, Local Holography and Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics

We study the properties of gravitational system in finite regions bounded by gravitational screens. We present the detail construction of the total energy of such regions and of the energy and momentum balance equations due to the flow of matter and gravitational radiation through the screen. We establish that the gravitational screen possesses analogs of surface tension, internal energy and viscous stress tensor, while the conservations are analogs of non-equilibrium balance equations for a viscous system. This gives a precise correspondence between gravity in finite regions and non-equilibrium thermodynamics.Comment: 41 pages, 3 figure

Lorentz invariant deformations of momentum space

In relative locality theories the geometric properties of phase space depart from the standard ones given by the fact that spaces of momenta are linear fibers over a spacetime base manifold. In particular here it is assumed that the momentum space is non linear and can therefore carry non trivial metric and composition law. We classify to second order all possible such deformations that preserve Lorentz invariance. We show that such deformations still exists after quotienting out by diffeomorphisms only if the non linear addition is non associative.Comment: 6 page

Spinning geometry = Twisted geometry

It is well known that the SU(2)-gauge invariant phase space of loop gravity can be represented in terms of twisted geometries. These are piecewise-linear-flat geometries obtained by gluing together polyhedra, but the resulting geometries are not continuous across the faces. Here we show that this phase space can also be represented by continuous, piecewise-flat three-geometries called spinning geometries. These are composed of metric-flat three-cells glued together consistently. The geometry of each cell and the manner in which they are glued is compatible with the choice of fluxes and holonomies. We first remark that the fluxes provide each edge with an angular momentum. By studying the piecewise-flat geometries which minimize edge lengths, we show that these angular momenta can be literally interpreted as the spin of the edges: the geometries of all edges are necessarily helices. We also show that the compatibility of the gluing maps with the holonomy data results in the same conclusion. This shows that a spinning geometry represents a way to glue together the three-cells of a twisted geometry to form a continuous geometry which represents a point in the loop gravity phase space.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figures, published versio

Action and Vertices in the Worldine Formalism

Utilizing the worldline formalism we study the effects of demanding local interactions on the corresponding vertex factor. We begin by reviewing the familiar case of a relativistic particle in Minkowksi space, showing that localization gives rise to the standard conservation of momentum at each vertex. A generalization to curved geometry is then studied and a notion of covariant Fourier transform is introduced to aid in the analysis. The vertex factor is found to coincide with the one derived for flat spacetime. Next, we apply this formalism to a loop immersed in a gravitational field, demonstrating that the loop momenta is determined entirely by the external momenta. Finally, we postulate that the semi--classical effects of quantum gravity on the Feynman path integral can be accounted for by a modification to the vertex factor which de-localizes the vertex. We study one particular Lorentz invariant de-localization which, remarkably, has no effect on conservation of vertex momenta.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figure

Spin Foam Models and the Classical Action Principle

We propose a new systematic approach that allows one to derive the spin foam (state sum) model of a theory starting from the corresponding classical action functional. It can be applied to any theory whose action can be written as that of the BF theory plus a functional of the B field. Examples of such theories include BF theories with or without cosmological term, Yang-Mills theories and gravity in various spacetime dimensions. Our main idea is two-fold. First, we propose to take into account in the path integral certain distributional configurations of the B field in which it is concentrated along lower dimensional hypersurfaces in spacetime. Second, using the notion of generating functional we develop perturbation expansion techniques, with the role of the free theory played by the BF theory. We test our approach on various theories for which the corresponding spin foam (state sum) models are known. We find that it exactly reproduces the known models for BF and 2D Yang-Mills theories. For the BF theory with cosmological term in 3 and 4 dimensions we calculate the terms of the transition amplitude that are of the first order in the cosmological constant, and find an agreement with the corresponding first order terms of the known state sum models. We discuss implications of our results for existing quantum gravity models.Comment: 65 pages, many figures (published version

Modified gravity without new degrees of freedom

We show that the new type of "non-metric" gravity theories introduced independently by Bengtsson and Krasnov can in fact be reexpressed explicitely as a metrical theory coupled to an auxiliary field. We unravel why such theories possess only one propagating graviton by looking at the quadratic perturbation around a fixed solution. And we give a general construction principle with a new class of example of such modified gravity theories still possessing only two propagating degrees of freedom.Comment: 19 page

A 2-categorical state sum model

It has long been argued that higher categories provide the proper algebraic structure underlying state sum invariants of 4-manifolds. This idea has been refined recently, by proposing to use 2-groups and their representations as specific examples of 2-categories. The challenge has been to make these proposals fully explicit. Here we give a concrete realization of this program. Building upon our earlier work with Baez and Wise on the representation theory of 2-groups, we construct a four-dimensional state sum model based on a categorified version of the Euclidean group. We define and explicitly compute the simplex weights, which may be viewed a categorified analogue of Racah-Wigner 6$j$-symbols. These weights solve an hexagon equation that encodes the formal invariance of the state sum under the Pachner moves of the triangulation. This result unravels the combinatorial formulation of the Feynman amplitudes of quantum field theory on flat spacetime proposed in [1], which was shown to lead after gauge-fixing to Korepanov's invariant of 4-manifolds.Comment: 21 pages, published versio

Quantum gravity at the corner

We investigate the quantum geometry of $2d$ surface $S$ bounding the Cauchy slices of 4d gravitational system. We investigate in detail and for the first time the symplectic current that naturally arises boundary term in the first order formulation of general relativity in terms of the Ashtekar-Barbero connection. This current is proportional to the simplest quadratic form constructed out of the triad field, pulled back on $S$. We show that the would-be-gauge degrees of freedom---arising from $SU(2)$ gauge transformations plus diffeomorphisms tangent to the boundary, are entirely described by the boundary $2$-dimensional symplectic form and give rise to a representation at each point of $S$ of $SL(2,\mathbb{R}) \times SU(2)$. Independently of the connection with gravity, this system is very simple and rich at the quantum level with possible connections with conformal field theory in 2d. A direct application of the quantum theory is modelling of the black horizons in quantum gravity

On Universal Vassiliev Invariants

Using properties of ordered exponentials and the definition of the Drinfeld associator as a monodromy operator for the Knizhnik-Zamolodchikov equations, we prove that the analytic and the combinatorial definitions of the universal Vassiliev invariants of links are equivalent.Comment: 33 page