Bubble divergences and gauge symmetries in spin foams

Abstract

The divergence structure of spin foam models and its relation to diffeomorphism symmetry has attracted renewed interest. We will discuss in detail the (nonoccurrence of) divergencies in the Barrett-Crane spin foam model, which with our choice of weights can be understood as an integral of delta functions only. We will present furthermore a simple method to estimate the occurrence of so-called bubble divergencies for general spin foam models. We expect divergencies in spin foams related to the existence of (diffeomorphism) gauge symmetries. Thus we have to conclude that such gauge symmetries are not (fully) present in the model we consider. But we will identify a class of gauge symmetries that occur at special solutions of equations imposed by the delta function weights. This situation is surprisingly similar to the case of broken diffeomorphism symmetries in discrete gravity, which are present around flat solutions. We introduce a method to derive (Ward identity-like) equations for the vertex amplitudes of the model in the case of broken gauge symmetries.