Ashtekar variables: structures in bundles (Q269819)

Canonical gravity can be formulated by means of a densitized dreibein together with an \(\mathrm{SU}(2)\) connection. These so-called Ashtekar variables are the fundamental quantities, loop quantum gravity is resting on. In this paper the authors review these variables from the perspective of fibre bundles. This is straightforward for the dreibein field as this is simply a frame. The Ashtekar connection, however, is more complicated. It turns out, that at the level of the tangent bundle, it is given by the Levi-Civita connection plus a multiple of the Weingarten mapping, whose action on vector fields is induced from the vector product on \(\mathbb R^3\). Lifted to the spin bundle, one regains the well-known \(\mathrm{SU}(2)\) Ashtekar connection. At the end, the authors apply their results to Friedmann-Robertson-Walker spacetimes.