Scale Factor Duality: A Quantum Cosmological Approach

We consider the minisuperspace model arising from the lowest order string effective action containing the graviton and the dilaton and study solutions of the resulting Wheeler-Dewitt equation. The scale factor duality symmetry is discussed in the context of our quantum cosmological model.Comment: 10 pages, plain tex, uses panda.tex (appended

Graviton propagator from background-independent quantum gravity

We study the graviton propagator in euclidean loop quantum gravity, using the spinfoam formalism. We use boundary-amplitude and group-field-theory techniques, and compute one component of the propagator to first order, under a number of approximations, obtaining the correct spacetime dependence. In the large distance limit, the only term of the vertex amplitude that contributes is the exponential of the Regge action: the other terms, that have raised doubts on the physical viability of the model, are suppressed by the phase of the vacuum state, which is determined by the extrinsic geometry of the boundary.Comment: 6 pages. Substantially revised second version. Improved boundary state ansat

Toroidal Soliton Solutions in O(3)^N Nonlinear Sigma Model

A set of N three component unit scalar fields in (3+1) Minkowski space-time is investigated. The highly nonlinear coupling between them is chosen to omit the scaling instabilities. The multi-soliton static configurations with arbitrary Hopf numbers are found. Moreover, the generalized version of the Vakulenko-Kapitansky inequality is obtained. The possibility of attractive, repulsing and noninteracting channels is discussed.Comment: to be published in Mod. Phys. Lett.

Ring-shaped exact Hopf solitons

The existence of ring-like structures in exact hopfion solutions is shown.Comment: version accepted for publication in JMP, includes symmetry transformation for finite paramete

Integrable theories and loop spaces: fundamentals, applications and new developments

We review our proposal to generalize the standard two-dimensional flatness construction of Lax-Zakharov-Shabat to relativistic field theories in d+1 dimensions. The fundamentals from the theory of connections on loop spaces are presented and clarified. These ideas are exposed using mathematical tools familiar to physicists. We exhibit recent and new results that relate the locality of the loop space curvature to the diffeomorphism invariance of the loop space holonomy. These result are used to show that the holonomy is abelian if the holonomy is diffeomorphism invariant. These results justify in part and set the limitations of the local implementations of the approach which has been worked out in the last decade. We highlight very interesting applications like the construction and the solution of an integrable four dimensional field theory with Hopf solitons, and new integrability conditions which generalize BPS equations to systems such as Skyrme theories. Applications of these ideas leading to new constructions are implemented in theories that admit volume preserving diffeomorphisms of the target space as symmetries. Applications to physically relevant systems like Yang Mills theories are summarized. We also discuss other possibilities that have not yet been explored.Comment: 64 pages, 8 figure

On the validity of ADM formulation in 2D quantum gravity

We investigate 2d gravity quantized in the ADM formulation, where only the loop length $l(z)$ is retained as a dynamical variable of the gravitation, in order to get an intuitive physical insight of the theory. The effective action of $l(z)$ is calculated by adding scalar fields of conformal coupling, and the problems of the critical dimension and the time development of $l$ are addressed.Comment: 12 page