2003/05/19 by J.D. Swain, John Swain · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1142/s0218271803003955
published as Int.J.Mod.Phys. D12 (2003) 1729-1736 · This paper received an "honorable mention" in the 2003 Essay Competition of the Gravity Research Foundation and should be appearing in a special issue of Int. J. Mod. Phys. D
arxiv created 2003/05/19 · openalex publication_date 2003/10/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Recent attempts to resolve the ambiguity in the loop quantum gravity description of the quantization of area has led to the idea that j=1 edges of spin-networks dominate in their contribution to black hole areas as opposed to j=1/2 which would naively be expected. This suggests that the true gauge group involved might be SO(3) rather than SU(2) with attendant difficulties. We argue that the assumption that a version of the Pauli principle is present in loop quantum gravity allows one to maintain SU(2) as the gauge group while still naturally achieving the desired suppression of spin-1/2 punctures. Areas come from j=1 punctures rather than j=1/2 punctures for much the same reason that photons lead to macroscopic classically observable fields while electrons do not.