Canonical path integral measures for Holst and Plebanski gravity. I: Reduced phase space derivation

DOI10.1088/0264-9381/27/24/245014zbMATH Open1208.83041arXiv0911.3433OpenAlexW3105626011MaRDI QIDQ3069475FDOQ3069475

Authors: J. Engle, Muxin Han, Thomas Thiemann 

Publication date: 26 January 2011

Published in: Classical and Quantum Gravity (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: An important aspect in defining a path integral quantum theory is the determination of the correct measure. For interacting theories and theories with constraints, this is non-trivial, and is normally not the heuristic "Lebesgue measure" usually used. There have been many determinations of a measure for gravity in the literature, but none for the Palatini or Holst formulations of gravity. Furthermore, the relations between different resulting measures for different formulations of gravity are usually not discussed. In this paper we use the reduced phase technique in order to derive the path-integral measure for the Palatini and Holst formulation of gravity, which is different from the Lebesgue measure up to local measure factors which depend on the spacetime volume element and spatial volume element. From this path integral for the Holst formulation of GR we can also give a new derivation of the Plebanski path integral and discover a discrepancy with the result due to Buffenoir, Henneaux, Noui and Roche (BHNR) whose origin we resolve. This paper is the first in a series that aims at better understanding the relation between canonical LQG and the spin foam approach.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/0911.3433

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Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Length, area, volume, other geometric measure theory (28A75) Einstein's equations (general structure, canonical formalism, Cauchy problems) (83C05) Quantization of the gravitational field (83C45) Path integrals in quantum mechanics (81S40)

Cited In (16)

• Canonical path integral quantization of Einstein's gravitational field
• Path integral on the extreme field configurations
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• Purely geometric path integral for spin-foams
• Spin-foam model for gravity coupled to massless scalar field
• Hamiltonian analysis of Plebanski theory
• Path integral measure for first-order and metric gravities
• A discretization of Holst's action for general relativity
• AN ABELIAN MODEL OF GRAVITY AND CANONICAL QUANTIZATION BY MEANS OF PATH INTEGRALS
• The reduced phase space of Palatini-Cartan-Holst theory
• The spin-foam approach to quantum gravity
• The Holst spin foam model via cubulations
• A measure for quantum paths, gravity and spacetime microstructure
• Relation between Regge calculus and BF theory on manifolds with defects
• Lagrangian constraints and renormalization of 4D gravity
• The regularized phase space path integral measure for Maxwell fields coupled to background gravity

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