Semiclassical Partition Functions for Gravity with Cosmic Strings

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive semiclassical partition function framework for gravity that incorporates cosmic strings and captures the full differentiable structure of 4-manifolds, with potential applications in quantum gravity and string theory.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to construct complete semiclassical partition functions in gravity that naturally include cosmic strings and account for all differentiable structures.

Findings

Partition functions include cosmic strings naturally.

Framework captures all differentiable structures of 4-manifolds.

Potential applications in quantum gravity and topological string theory.

Abstract

In this paper we describe an approach to construct semiclassical partition functions in gravity which are complete in the sense that they contain a complete description of the differentiable structures of the underlying 4-manifold. In addition, we find our construction naturally includes cosmic strings. We discuss some possible applications of the partition functions in the fields of both quantum gravity and topological string theory