Towards the graviton from spinfoams: the complete perturbative expansion of the 3d toy model

TL;DR

This paper derives a complete perturbative expansion of the 6j-symbol in 3d quantum gravity, providing explicit quantum corrections and advancing understanding of spin foam models related to the graviton.

Contribution

It presents the first full perturbative expansion of the 6j-symbol for the isosceles tetrahedron, including quantum corrections up to second order and explicit phase calculations.

Findings

Explicit quantum corrections up to second order.

Complete expansion of the 6j-symbol with phases at all orders.

Next-to-leading correction to Ponzano-Regge asymptotics.

Abstract

We consider an exact expression for the 6j-symbol for the isosceles tetrahedron, involving integrals over SU(2), and use it to write the two-point function of 3d gravity on a single tetrahedron as a group integral. The perturbative expansion of this expression is then performed with respect to the boundary geometry using a simple saddle-point analysis. We derive the complete expansion in inverse powers of the length scale and evaluate explicitly the quantum corrections up to second order. Finally, we use the same method to provide the complete expansion of the isosceles 6j-symbol with the explicit phases at all orders and the next-to-leading correction to the Ponzano-Regge asymptotics.