| Quantization of strings and branes coupled to BF theory (2006) | |||||||||
Abstract | |||||||||
| BF theory is a topological theory that can be seen as a natural generalization of 3-dimensional gravity to arbitrary dimensions. Here we show that the coupling to point particles that is natural in three dimensions generalizes in a direct way to BF theory in d dimensions coupled to (d-3)-branes. In the resulting model, the connection is flat except along the membrane world-sheet, where it has a conical singularity whose strength is proportional to the membrane tension. As a step towards canonically quantizing these models, we show that a basis of kinematical states is given by `membrane spin networks', which are spin networks equipped with extra data where their edges end on a brane. | |||||||||
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