What is the latest research on spin foam models of quantum gravity?

[john baez]

I have started on your lecture notes
they get hard around page 13
and interesting too

I hope other people here at PF study your notes and we can make a collective effort of understanding.

If you have questions, ask them here and I'll try to reply! - probably after I get back from Berlin, though, unless I have time during the conference.

I see that Tullio Regge is the hero of your pages 16, 17, 18.

Yes! Actions speak louder than words, and his is one of the best.

 

[Spin_Network]

Hi -

You can see the transparencies of my talk at Loops '05 here:

Towards a Spin Foam Model of Quantum Gravity

I've changed the title from what appears in http://loops05.aei.mpg.de/" . I've also changed my abstract. Here it is:

Spin foam models include several different classes of physical theories: lattice gauge theories, dynamical triangulation models of quantum gravity, "chain mail" quantum field theories, and topological string theories. Is there a spin foam model of quantum gravity in 4 dimensions? To address this question, we review recent work on causal dynamical triangulations and the renormalization group. This suggests that quantum gravity is a well-defined theory with the curious property that spacetime is effectively 4-dimensional at large distance scales, but 2-dimensional at very short distance scales. This is just what one might expect from a spin foam model, since spacetime is fundamentally 2-dimensional in these theories. We discuss properties a spin foam model should have in order to approximate general relativity at large distance scales.
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I refer to a bunch of papers in my talk, but you can more easily get to those papers "[URL my webpage[/URL].

My grad students Jeffrey Morton, Derek Wise and I are flying to Berlin this Saturday... this is going to be fun!

This was just posted to Xr :http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0510033

prior to their leaving U.S of A.

and this may be of interest as a historical reference?:http://groups.google.com/group/sci....group%3Dsci.physics.research#efe70e642e41021f