From the Einstein-Cartan to the Ashtekar-Barbero canonical constraints, passing through the Nieh-Yan functional

The Ashtekar-Barbero constraints for General Relativity with fermions are derived from the Einstein-Cartan canonical theory rescaling the state functional of the gravity-spinor coupled system by the exponential of the Nieh-Yan functional. A one parameter quantization ambiguity naturally appears and can be associated with the Immirzi parameter.Comment: Minor changes, two references added, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

The Immirzi Parameter as an Instanton Angle

The Barbero-Immirzi parameter is a one parameter quantization ambiguity underpinning the loop approach to quantum gravity that bears tantalizing similarities to the theta parameter of gauge theories such as Yang-Mills and QCD. Despite the apparent semblance, the Barbero-Immirzi field has resisted a direct topological interpretation along the same lines as the theta-parameter. Here we offer such an interpretation. Our approach begins from the perspective of Einstein-Cartan gravity as the symmetry broken phase of a de Sitter gauge theory. From this angle, just as in ordinary gauge theories, a theta-term emerges from the requirement that the vacuum is stable against quantum mechanical tunneling. The Immirzi parameter is then identified as a combination of Newton's constant, the cosmological constant, and the theta-parameter.Comment: 24 page

SU(2) gauge theory of gravity with topological invariants

The most general gravity Lagrangian in four dimensions contains three topological densities, namely Nieh-Yan, Pontryagin and Euler, in addition to the Hilbert-Palatini term. We set up a Hamiltonian formulation based on this Lagrangian. The resulting canonical theory depends on three parameters which are coefficients of these terms and is shown to admit a real SU(2) gauge theoretic interpretation with a set of seven first-class constraints. Thus, in addition to the Newton's constant, the theory of gravity contains three (topological) coupling constants, which might have non-trivial imports in the quantum theory.Comment: Based on a talk at Loops-11, Madrid, Spain; To appear in Journal of Physics: Conference Serie

Barbero-Immirzi field in canonical formalism of pure gravity

The Barbero-Immirzi (BI) parameter is promoted to a field and a canonical analysis is performed when it is coupled with a Nieh-Yan topological invariant. It is shown that, in the effective theory, the BI field is a canonical pseudoscalar minimally coupled with gravity. This framework is argued to be more natural than the one of the usual Holst action. Potential consequences in relation with inflation and the quantum theory are briefly discussed.Comment: 10 page

Quantum realizations of Hilbert-Palatini second-class constraints

In a classical theory of gravity, the Barbero-Immirzi parameter ($\eta$) appears as a topological coupling constant through the Lagrangian density containing the Hilbert-Palatini term and the Nieh-Yan invariant. In a quantum framework, the topological interpretation of $\eta$ can be captured through a rescaling of the wavefunctional representing the Hilbert-Palatini theory, as in the case of the QCD vacuum angle. However, such a rescaling cannot be realized for pure gravity within the standard (Dirac) quantization procedure where the second-class constraints of Hilbert-Palatini theory are eliminated beforehand. Here we present a different treatment of the Hilbert-Palatini second-class constraints in order to set up a general rescaling procedure (a) for gravity with or without matter and (b) for any choice of gauge (e.g. time gauge). The analysis is developed using the Gupta-Bleuler and the coherent state quantization methods.Comment: Published versio

Some partition and analytical identities arising from the Alladi, Andrews, Gordon bijection

In the work of Alladi et al. (J Algebra 174:636–658, 1995) the authors provided a generalization of the two Capparelli identities involving certain classes of integer partitions. Inspired by that contribution, in particular as regards the general setting and the tools the authors employed, we obtain new partition identities by identifying further sets of partitions that can be explicitly put into a one-to-one correspondence by the method described in the 1995 paper. As a further result, although of a different nature, we obtain an analytical identity of Rogers–Ramanujan type, involving generating functions, for a class of partition identities already found in that paper and that generalize the first Capparelli identity and include it as a particular case. To achieve this, we apply the same strategy as Kanade and Russell did in a recent paper. This method relies on the use of jagged partitions that can be seen as a more general kind of integer partitions