Gauge-invariant coherent states for Loop Quantum Gravity II: Non-abelian gauge groups

This is the second paper concerning gauge-invariant coherent states for Loop Quantum Gravity. Here, we deal with the gauge group SU(2), this being a significant complication compared to the abelian U(1) case encountered in the previous article. We study gauge-invariant coherent states on certain special graphs by analytical and numerical methods. We find that their overlap is Gauss-peaked in gauge-invariant quantities, as long as states are not labeled by degenerate gauge orbits, i.e. points where the gauge-invariant configuration space has singularities. In these cases the overlaps are still concentrated around these points, but the peak profile exhibits a plateau structure. This shows how the semiclassical properties of the states are influenced by the geometry of the gauge-invariant phase space.Comment: 60 pages, 8 figure

Deformation of the EPRL spin foam model by a cosmological constant

In this article, we consider an ad-hoc deformation of the EPRL model for quantum gravity by a cosmological constant term. This sort of deformation has been first introduced by Han for the case of the $4$-simplex. In this article, we generalise the deformation to the case of arbitrary vertices, and compute its large-$j$-asymptotics. We show that, if the boundary data corresponds to a $4d$ polyhedron $P$, then the asymptotic formula gives the usual Regge action plus a cosmological constant term. We pay particular attention to the determinant of the Hessian matrix, and show that it can be related to the one of the undeformed vertex.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Investigation of the Spinfoam Path integral with Quantum Cuboid Intertwiners

In this work, we investigate the 4d path integral for Euclidean quantum gravity on a hypercubic lattice, as given by the Spin Foam model by Engle, Pereira, Rovelli, Livine, Freidel and Krasnov (EPRL-FK). To tackle the problem, we restrict to a set of quantum geometries that reflects the large amount of lattice symmetries. In particular, the sum over intertwiners is restricted to quantum cuboids, i.e. coherent intertwiners which describe a cuboidal geometry in the large-$j$ limit. Using asymptotic expressions for the vertex amplitude, we find several interesting properties of the state sum. First of all, the value of coupling constants in the amplitude functions determines whether geometric or non-geometric configurations dominate the path integral. Secondly, there is a critical value of the coupling constant $\alpha$, which separates two phases. In both phases, the diffeomorphism symmetry appears to be broken. In one, the dominant contribution comes from highly irregular, in the other from highly regular configurations, both describing flat Euclidean space with small quantum fluctuations around them, viewed in different coordinate systems. On the critical point diffeomorphism symmetry is nearly restored, however. Thirdly, we use the state sum to compute the physical norm of kinematical states, i.e. their norm in the physical Hilbert space. We find that states which describe boundary geometry with high torsion have exponentially suppressed physical norm. We argue that this allows one to exclude them from the state sum in calculations.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figures, changed to match published version, title changed to match journal specification

Gauge-invariant coherent states for Loop Quantum Gravity I: Abelian gauge groups

In this paper we investigate the properties of gauge-invariant coherent states for Loop Quantum Gravity, for the gauge group U(1). This is done by projecting the corresponding complexifier coherent states, which have been applied in numerous occasions to investigate the semiclassical limit of the kinematical sector, to the gauge-invariant Hilbert space. This being the first step to construct physical coherent states, we arrive at a set of gauge-invariant states that approximate well the gauge-invariant degrees of freedom of abelian LQG. Furthermore, these states turn out to encode explicit information about the graph topology, and show the same pleasant peakedness properties known from the gauge-variant complexifier coherent states.Comment: 36 page

Coarse graining free theories with gauge symmetries: the linearized case

Discretizations of continuum theories often do not preserve the gauge symmetry content. This occurs in particular for diffeomorphism symmetry in general relativity, which leads to severe difficulties both in canonical and covariant quantization approaches. We discuss here the method of perfect actions, which attempts to restore gauge symmetries by mirroring exactly continuum physics on a lattice via a coarse graining process. Analytical results can only be obtained via a perturbative approach, for which we consider the first steps, namely the coarse graining of the linearized theory. The linearized gauge symmetries are exact also in the discretized theory, hence we develop a formalism to deal with gauge systems. Finally we provide a discretization of linearized gravity as well as a coarse graining map and show that with this choice the 3D linearized gravity action is invariant under coarse graining.Comment: 31 pages, 3 pictures, title changed, reference update

Discretisations, Constraints and Diffeomorphisms in Quantum Gravity

In this review we discuss the interplay between discretization, constraint implementation, and diffeomorphism symmetry in Loop Quantum Gravity and Spin Foam models. To this end we review the Consistent Discretizations approach, which is an application of the master constraint program to construct the physical Hilbert space of the canonical theory, as well as the Perfect Actions approach, which aims at finding a path integral measure with the correct symmetry behavior under diffeomorphisms.Comment: Contribution for a special issue of SIGMA on Loop Quantum Gravity and Cosmolog