Most Influential Paper, third quarter 2007

[marcus]

This quarter the poll is focused on four dark horse longshots.

AASTRUP GRIMSTRUP
(Missed them when they came out, but better late than never.) They have found a way to construct the Connes' Standard Model of particle physics, on the LQG configuration space of all geometries of a given spacetime continuum, instead of on a 4D smooth manifold. Their idea is to put Connes' NCG together with LQG.

BOJOWALD
His *Nature Physics* article says that in his model there was a bounce and certain features of the Before quantum state cannot be determined from knowledge of the After quantum state. He has identified an area of fundamental uncertainty about what happened before the big bang. Is he right?

BONANNO REUTER
They get the usual amount of inflation, but without assuming exotic matter, plus their inflation comes to a graceful stop without a contrived "slow roll" potential, and reheating is automatic. In other words, they get natural inflation without needing an "inflaTON" or any other extras. Their model simply renormalizes Einstein's gravity---that done, the rest comes free. They also get the correct entropy of the Microwave Background. Are they right?

FREIDEL KRASNOV
They propose a new dynamics for the LQG spinfoam. If it is the right one, this culminates a search that has lasted some 10 years. There are rival candidates.

Here are the links
Aastrup and Grimstrup
Intersecting Connes Noncommutative Geometry with Quantum Gravity
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0601127

Bojowald
What happened before the big bang?
http://npg.nature.com/nphys/journal/v3/n8/full/nphys654.html
(abstract page with citation count: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007NatPh...3..523B )

Bonanno and Reuter
Entropy signature of the running cosmological constant
http://arxiv.org/abs/0706.0174

Freidel and Krasnov
A New Spin Foam Model for 4d Gravity
http://arxiv.org/abs/0708.1595================
some past M.I.P. polls
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=116791
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=124951
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=134513
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=149466
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=162163
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=174427

 

[marcus]

Here's some background on the various papers. We have had some discussion of several of them. Here is a thread in Cosmology forum about the Bonanno Reuter
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=180150

Here is a thread that started with discussion of the Freidel Krasnov paper:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=180363

In this thread F-H reminded me to include a paper of Alesci and Rovelli in the 3rd quarter poll and I neglected to do this! Sorry F-H! the poll is already posted, but you are welcome to write in a forecast in favor of the paper you mentioned. It is called
The Complete LQG Propagator
Emanuele Alesci, Carlo Rovelli
http://arxiv.org/abs/0708.0883