A Lagrangian approach to the Barrett-Crane spin foam model-Livine Bonzom

[marcus]

A Lagrangian approach to the Barrett-Crane spin foam model--Livine Bonzom

Here's a paper helping to sort out the situation with spinfoams. I think it is probably important. Actually we've been anticipating something of this caliber. Back in October I put in a placeholder for an expected Livine paper to be nominated for this quarter's MIP.

Earlier this year there was a Freidel paper showing an action-based path integral formulation for several spinfoam models. This paper seems aimed in a similar direction.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.3456
A Lagrangian approach to the Barrett-Crane spin foam model
Valentin Bonzom, Etera R. Livine
25 pages, 4 figures
(Submitted on 18 Dec 2008)
"We provide the Barrett-Crane spin foam model for quantum gravity with a discrete action principle, consisting in the usual BF term with discretized simplicity constraints which in the continuum turn topological BF theory into gravity. The setting is the same as usually considered in the literature: space-time is cut into 4-simplices, the connection describes how to glue these 4-simplices together and the action is a sum of terms depending on the holonomies around each triangle. We impose the discretized simplicity constraints on disjoints tetrahedra and we show how the Lagrange multipliers for the simplicity constraints distort the parallel transport and the correlations between neighbouring 4-simplices. We then construct the discretized BF action using a non-commutative product between SU(2) plane waves. We show how this naturally leads to the Barrett-Crane model. This clears up the geometrical meaning of the model. We discuss the natural generalization of this action principle and the spin foam models it leads to. We show how the recently introduced spinfoam fusion coefficients emerge with a non-trivial measure. In particular, we recover the Engle-Pereira-Rovelli spinfoam model by weakening the discretized simplicity constraints. Finally, we identify the two sectors of Plebanski's theory and we give the analog of the Barrett-Crane model in the non-geometric sector."

 

[MTd2]

I wonder how he will put fields in that... I am clueless.

 

[Entropia]

I am excited to see this paper addressing the long-standing issue of finding an action-based path integral formulation for the Barrett-Crane spin foam model. This approach not only provides a clearer geometrical interpretation of the model, but also opens up possibilities for generalizations and extensions to other spinfoam models. The inclusion of the Engle-Pereira-Rovelli spinfoam model and the identification of the two sectors of Plebanski's theory are also significant contributions to the field. I look forward to further developments and applications of this Lagrangian approach in quantum gravity research.