Asymptotic safety describes a scenario in which general relativity can be
quantized as a conventional field theory, despite being nonrenormalizable when
expanding it around a fixed background geometry. It is formulated in the
framework of the Wilsonian renormalization group and relies crucially on the
existence of an ultraviolet fixed point, for which evidence has been found
using renormalization group equations in the continuum.
"Causal Dynamical Triangulations" (CDT) is a concrete research program to
obtain a nonperturbative quantum field theory of gravity via a lattice
regularization, and represented as a sum over spacetime histories. In the
Wilsonian spirit one can use this formulation to try to locate fixed points of
the lattice theory and thereby provide independent, nonperturbative evidence
for the existence of a UV fixed point.
We describe the formalism of CDT, its phase diagram, possible fixed points
and the "quantum geometries" which emerge in the different phases. We also
argue that the formalism may be able to describe a more general class of
Ho\v{r}ava-Lifshitz gravitational models.Comment: Review, 146 pages, many figure