The introduction of the July 2013 "Evidence for Maximal Acceleration" paper has a brief paragraph that summarizes how the a
max derivation goes:
==quote page 1 of
http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.3228 ==
... The key to our derivation relies on a core aspect of the covariant approach: the
proportionality between generators of boosts and rotations [15]. This ties space-space and space-time components of the momentum conjugate to the gravitational connection and transfers the discretization of the area spectrum to a discretization of a suitable Lorentzian quantity, which, we show, is related to acceleration. The mechanism indicates the existence of a maximal acceleration. This, in turn,
yields a bound on the curvature and on the energy density in appropriate cosmological contexts, supporting the results in loop quantum cosmology and
for black holes…
==endquote==
It's easy to see that they were already anticipating results about the density maximum, the bounce, and the Loop black hole model, back in July 2013 when they were deriving the Loop acceleration max.
SO THERE ARE TWO things to become conversant with here: the
discrete area spectrum and the
boost-rotation proportionality. They are too technical for us to enter into detail explanation right now. Let's just be aware of them as keywords, and as essential features of Loop gravity.
The discrete area spectrum was one of the earliest results of LQG, going back to around 1990. It's constantly coming up in discussion and being applied (along with analogous discreteness results for some other geometric operators).
The proportionality between boost and rotation generators is here being used to link acceleration with area and as they said, to "transfer" the discreteness. That proportionality is associated with the basic function on which spinfoam
dynamics is built, the so-called "
Y map". I first recall seeing it in connection with some work by Eugenio Biachi around 2006 or 2007. The idea is we have two important groups SU(2) (basically spatial rotations) and SL(2,C) (basically spacetime symmetries, the Lorentz group). To take on DYNAMICS we have to map one into the other! Abstract groups are concretized by their matrix "representations" so we need an algebraic map from the SU(2) reps to the SL(2,C) reps. The Y map does this.
So Loop dynamics is built on it and ALSO it establishes that proportionality we were talking about.
Now for a moment everything becomes overly algebraic and a bit incomprehensible. I'll just quote some words from one of the many paper where Y map has appeared in the spinfoam literature during recent years. For a concise summary (minus explanatory background) one can refer to any of numerous papers. One I like is by Chirco, Haggard, Riello, Rovelli. E.g. have a look at page 6 of this:
==quote page 6 of
http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.5262 ==
The dynamics of the theory is obtained mapping these states to unitary representations of SL(2,C). A unitary representation (in the principal series) [25] is labelled by a discrete spin k ∈ N/2 and a continuous parameter p ∈ R
+ and the representation space is denoted H
(p,k). This space decomposes into irreducible representations of the SU(2) subgroup as follows
H
(p,k) = ⊕
j=k∞H
j . . . . . (40)
where H
j is the (finite dimensional) SU(2) representation of spin j. Therefore H
(p,k) admits a basis |(p, k); j, m⟩ obtained diagonalizing the total angular momentum L
2 and the L
z = L⃗ · ⃗z component of the SU(2) subgroup. The map that gives this injection, and defines the loop quantum gravity covariant dynamics is given by
Y
γ
j→H
jγ
|j,m⟩→ |(
γj,j);j,m⟩ . . . . . . . . (41)
Here [the gamma]
γ ∈ R
+ is the Immirzi parameter.
….
….
On the image of the map Y
γ, the boost generator K⃗ and the rotation generator L⃗ satisfy
⟨K⟩ =
γ⟨L⟩ . . . . . . . . (43)
as matrix elements.
==endquote==
I tried not too successfully to make the lowercase italic gamma visually distinguishable from the capital Y. Gamma is just a positive real number--it's used in constructing SL(2,C) Lorentz group representation matrices and it turns out to actually BE the proportionality we were looking for.