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I don't know if this paper was commented on here while I was away at Christmas time, but I was just pointed to it by a paper on today's arxiv and I think it desrves notice.
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0411073
Robert Dijkgraaf, Sergei Gukov, Andrew Neitzke, and Cumrun Vafa; Toplogical M-theory as unification of Form Theories of Gravity.
So far I have only read the abstract:
An ambitious claim, for sure, and the paper I was reading today, assumes it is a successful one.
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0411073
Robert Dijkgraaf, Sergei Gukov, Andrew Neitzke, and Cumrun Vafa; Toplogical M-theory as unification of Form Theories of Gravity.
So far I have only read the abstract:
We introduce a notion of topological M-theory and argue that it provides a unification of form theories of gravity in various dimensions. Its classical solutions involve G_2 holonomy metrics on 7-manifolds, obtained from a topological action for a 3-form gauge field introduced by Hitchin. We show that by reductions of this 7-dimensional theory one can classically obtain 6-dimensional topological A and B models, the topological sector of loop quantum gravity in 4 dimensions, and Chern-Simons gravity in 3 dimensions. We also find that the 7-dimensional M-theory perspective sheds some light on the fact that the topological string partition function is a wavefunction, as well as on S-duality between the A and B models. The degrees of freedom of the A and B models appear as conjugate variables in the 7-dimensional theory. Finally, from the topological M-theory perspective we find hints of an intriguing holographic link between non-supersymmetric Yang-Mills in 4 dimensions and A model topological strings on twistor space.
An ambitious claim, for sure, and the paper I was reading today, assumes it is a successful one.