2004/09/22 by S. Carlip · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.12942/lrr-2005-1
published as Living Rev.Rel.8:1,2005 · 61 pages, draft of review for Living Reviews; comments, criticisms, additions, missing references welcome; v2: minor changes, added references
arxiv created 2004/09/22 · arxiv updated 2015/06/25
In three spacetime dimensions, general relativity drastically simplifies, becoming a ``topological'' theory with no propagating local degrees of freedom. Nevertheless, many of the difficult conceptual problems of quantizing gravity are still present. In this review, I summarize the rather large body of work that has gone towards quantizing (2+1)-dimensional vacuum gravity in the setting of a spatially closed universe.