In search of fundamental discreteness in (2 + 1)-dimensional quantum gravity

Abstract

Inspired by previous work in (2 + 1)-dimensional quantum gravity, which found evidence for a discretization of time in the quantum theory, we reexamine the issue for the case of pure Lorentzian gravity with vanishing cosmological constant and spatially compact universes of genus g ⩾ 2. Taking the Chern–Simons formulation with the Poincaré gauge group as our starting point, we identify a set of length variables corresponding to space- and timelike distances along geodesics in three-dimensional Minkowski space. These are Dirac observables, that is, functions on the reduced phase space, whose quantization is essentially unique. For both space- and timelike distance operators, the spectrum is continuous and not bounded away from zero.