Unraveling Loop Gravity in Quantum Physics

[RAD4921]

I've been hearing a lot about "loop gravity" latey. I am not even sure if I am under the right title "quantum physics". In short can anyone tell me what loop gravity is? Thanks

 

[selfAdjoint]

Check out the "Strings, Branes, and LQG" forum. LQG stands for Loop Quantum Gravity.

 

[marcus]

I've been hearing a lot about "loop gravity" latey. I am not even sure if I am under the right title "quantum physics". In short can anyone tell me what loop gravity is? Thanks

Cambridge University Press is bringing out a book on Loop Quantum Gravity this year. It is by Carlo Rovelli
and a draft of the book is available free at his website

http://www.cpt.univ-mrs.fr/~rovelli/rovelli.html

People call LQG by the nickname "Loop Gravity" for short

and also the term serves as a catchall for many kinds of non-string approaches to quantizing gravity which go by many different names.
(spinfoam QG, quantum General Relativity, quantum geometry, Background Independent QG, nonperturbative QG, Simplicial QG)

Rovelli talks about the different names (which causes a bit of confusion sometimes) in his book.

So when you hear people say Loop gravity it could be the precise narrowly defined LQG approach to quantizing the geometry of the universe (because gravity is geometry)

or it could be a more general inclusive catchall term for a bunch of interrelated somewhat similar approaches to quantizing gravity (or spacetime geometry)