Spinfoam fermions

Fermions in three-dimensional spinfoam quantum gravity

We study the coupling of massive fermions to the quantum mechanical dynamics of spacetime emerging from the spinfoam approach in three dimensions. We first recall the classical theory before constructing a spinfoam model of quantum gravity coupled to spinors. The technique used is based on a finite expansion in inverse fermion masses leading to the computation of the vacuum to vacuum transition...

Hamiltonian spinfoam gravity

Spinfoam Models for M -theory

We use the approach to generate spin foam models by an auxiliary field theory defined on a group manifold (as recently developed in quantum gravity and quantization of BF -theories) in the context of topological quantum field theories with a 3-form field strength. Topological field theories of this kind in seven dimensions are related to the superconformal field theories which live on the world...

Flipped spinfoam vertex and loop gravity

We introduce a vertex amplitude for 4d loop quantum gravity. We derive it from a conventional quantization of a Regge discretization of euclidean general relativity. This yields a spinfoam sum that corrects some difficulties of the Barrett-Crane theory. The second class simplicity constraints are imposed weakly, and not strongly as in Barrett-Crane theory. Thanks to a flip in the quantum algebr...

A new spinfoam vertex for quantum gravity

We introduce a new spinfoam vertex to be used in models of 4d quantum gravity based on SU(2) and SO(4) BF theory plus constraints. It can be seen as the conventional vertex of SU(2) BF theory, the 15j symbol, in a particular basis constructed using SU(2) coherent states. This basis makes the geometric interpretation of the variables transparent: they are the vectors normal to the triangles with...