Quantum theory of fluctuating space?

[Physics Monkey]

Hi all,

This is partially motivated by the thread on Ashtekar's new review and by old results on emergent spacetime in condensed matter models.

Has any progress been made on the problem of emergent space (not emergent spacetime) in LQG or allied approaches? By this I mean problems that take as given a non-emergent time and are able to demonstrate two phases - one without a well defined spatial metric (non-geometric) and one with a spatial metric (geometric)?

[tom.stoer]

In Causal dynamical triangulation something like deSitter space emerges at large scales

[atyy]

There's some weird stuff like
http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.3195
http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.0270
http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.3206

Within LQG, the most interesting analysis is probably Jonathan Engle's
http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.0709
http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.2865
http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.2187

Hellmann has summarized the situation in 2+1D.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.1688

[Physics Monkey]

Interesting. I would have thought this problem would be a lot easier if "quantizing" time or seeing time "emerge" was the critical stumbling block. I think this is part of the reason why AdS/CFT works so well while flat/? and dS/? are still in their infancy.