Particles as Wilson lines of gravitational field

Abstract

Since the work of Mac-Dowell-Mansouri it is well known that gravity can be written as a gauge theory for the de Sitter group. In this paper we consider the coupling of this theory to the simplest gauge invariant observables that is, Wilson lines. The dynamics of these Wilson lines is shown to reproduce exactly the dynamics of relativistic particles coupled to gravity, the gauge charges carried by Wilson lines being the mass and spin of the particles. Insertion of Wilson lines breaks in a controlled manner the diffeomorphism symmetry of the theory and the gauge degree of freedom are transmuted to particles degree of freedom.

19 pages, some number of comments and clarifications added, to be published in Phys. Rev. D

References in corpus (3)

• Quantum gravity in terms of topological observables
• General relativity with a topological phase: an action principle
• Doubly Special Relativity: facts and prospects

Cited by in corpus (15)

• Poincare gauge theory of gravity: Friedman cosmology with even and odd parity modes. Analytic part
• $BF$ gravity
• Fermions in three-dimensional spinfoam quantum gravity
• Effective particle kinematics from Quantum Gravity
• Extended matter coupled to BF theory
• Kinematics of a relativistic particle with de Sitter momentum space
• Massless polarized particle and Faraday rotation of light in the Schwarzschild spacetime
• Deformed Carroll particle from 2+1 gravity
• On gravitational defects, particles and strings
• Covariant version of Pauli Hamiltonian, spin-induced non commutativity, Thomas precession and precession of spin
• Conserved Topological Defects in Non-Embedded Graphs in Quantum Gravity
• The new spin foam models and quantum gravity
• Can we see gravitational collapse in (quantum) gravity perturbation theory?
• Holographic Aspects of Even-Dimensional Topological Gravity
• Gravity from AKSZ-Manin theories in two, three, and four dimensions