Towards computational insights into the large-scale structure of spin foams

TL;DR

This paper investigates the large-scale structure of spin foams in quantum gravity using simplified models and renormalization techniques, revealing a weak phase transition and offering new insights into symmetry restoration.

Contribution

It introduces a statistical physics approach to spin foam models, demonstrating phase transition behavior and advancing understanding of their large-scale properties.

Findings

Observed a weak phase transition in simplified models

Renormalization can restore broken symmetries

Provides a new research direction for quantum gravity models

Abstract

Understanding the large-scale physics is crucial for the spin foam approach to quantum gravity. We tackle this challenge from a statistical physics perspective using simplified, yet feature-rich models. In particular, this allows us to explicitly answer whether broken symmetries will be restored by renormalization: We observe a weak phase transition in both Migdal-Kadanoff and tensor network renormalization. In this work we give a concise presentation of the concepts, results and promises of this new direction of research.