Spacetime as a Feynman diagram: The connection formulation (Q2704296)

Spin-foam formalism is studied in order to improve the models of gravity living on finite simplicial lattice spacetime. One considers that the lattice truncates the presumably infinite set of gravitational degrees of freedom to a finite set. To obtain models that can accommodate an infinite set of degrees of freedom, the authors propose the summing over all lattice spacetimes. It is shown that this sum can be realized as the sum over Feynman diagrams of a quantum field theory living on a suitable group manifold. Explicit formula for the action of the field theory corresponding to any given spin-foam model in a wide class which includes several gravity models is given. The results obtained in the paper generalize those of the Boulatov-Ooguri models [\textit{D. V. Boulatov}, et al., Nucl. Phys. B 275, 641-686 (1986) and \textit{H. Ooguri}, Mod. Phys. Lett. A 7, 2799-2810 (1992)] of three- and four-dimensional topological field theories and also the old matrix models of two-dimensional systems with dynamical topology.