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In physics, a spin foam is a topological structure made out of two-dimensional faces that represents one of the configurations that must be summed to obtain a Feynman's path integral (functional integration) description of quantum gravity. It is closely related to loop quantum gravity.

Spin foam in loop quantum gravity

In loop quantum gravity there are some results from a possible canonical quantization of general relativity at the Planck scale. Any path integral formulation of the theory can be written in the form of a spin foam model, such as the Barrett-Crane model. A spin network is defined as a diagram (like Feynman diagram) which make a basis of connections between the elements of a differentiable manifold for the Hilbert spaces defined over them. Spin networks provide a representation for computations of amplitudes between two different hypersurfaces of the manifold. Any evolution of spin network provides a spin foam over a manifold of one dimension higher than the dimensions of the corresponding spin network. A spin foam may be viewed as a quantum history.

The idea

The concept of a spin foam, although not called that, was introduced in the paper "A Step Toward Pregeometry I: Ponzano-Regge Spin Networks and the Origin of Spacetime Structure in Four Dimensions" by Norman J. LaFave (GR-QC 9310036) (1993). In this paper, the concept of creating sandwiches of 4-geometry (and local time scale) from spin networks is described, along with the connection of these spin 4-geometry sandwiches to form paths of spin networks connecting the structures between given spin network boundaries (spin foams). Quantization of the structure leads to a generalized Feynman path integral over connected paths of spin networks between the spin network boundaries. This paper goes beyond much of the later work by showing how 4-geometry is already present in the seemingly three dimensional spin networks and how local time scales occur.

Spin networks provide a language to describe quantum geometry of space. Spin foam does the same job on spacetime. A spin network is a one-dimensional graph, together with labels on its vertices and edges which encodes aspects of a spatial geometry.

Spacetime is considered as a superposition of spin foams, which is a generalized Feynman diagram where instead of a graph we use a higher-dimensional complex. In topology this sort of space is called a 2-complex. A spin foam is a particular type of 2-complex, together with labels for vertices, edges and faces. The boundary of a spin foam is spin network, just as in the theory of manifolds, where the boundary of an n-manifold is an (n-1)-manifold.

See also

• Loop quantum gravity
• Invariance mechanics

References

Spin foam on arxiv.org

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