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arxiv: hep-th/0309012 · v1 · submitted 2003-08-31 · ✦ hep-th

Space-time foam in 2D and the sum over topologies

classification ✦ hep-th
keywords integralpathspace-timetopologiesfoamgeometriesgravitylorentzian
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It is well-known that the sum over topologies in quantum gravity is ill-defined, due to a super-exponential growth of the number of geometries as a function of the space-time volume, leading to a badly divergent gravitational path integral. Not even in dimension 2, where a non-perturbative quantum gravity theory can be constructed explicitly from a (regularized) path integral, has this problem found a satisfactory solution. -- In the present work, we extend a previous 2d Lorentzian path integral, regulated in terms of Lorentzian random triangulations, to include space-times with an arbitrary number of handles. We show that after the imposition of physically motivated causality constraints, the combined sum over geometries and topologies is well-defined and possesses a continuum limit which yields a concrete model of space-time foam in two dimensions.

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