Dichromatic state sum models

Manuel Bärenz and I have just finished a paper on 4-dimensional topological state sum models. It is posted here (since 12 Jan 2016), and on arXiv. The idea of the paper is to squeeze more out of the Crane-Yetter state sum model and perhaps indicate how to get a viable quantum gravity model (or condensed matter model) from it.

The original CY was defined just using the quantum group version of SU(2), and turns out to be rather too simple be an interesting physics model. The reason is that the group SU(2) is used to “colour” both one- and two-dimensional dual edges. This has the effect that the quantum theory can’t “see” the difference between the one- and two-dimensional stuff.

All this is best seen using a handle decomposition rather than a triangulation. There’s an operation that changes 1-handles into 2-handles (thus changing the topology of the manifold) and the problem with the original CY is that it is invariant under this operation – which is a property that isn’t wanted. As a consequence, CY is the same on lots of different manfolds, which is why it is “too simple”.

One of the things that Manuel and I have is an efficient translation between the triangulation picture and the handle picture. In the handle picture, Jerome Petit had the idea that the 1- and 2-handles can be coloured differently, to give a new set of models that he called “dichromatic”. We have understood that in the triangulation picture, this corresponds to the CY invariant being “nonmodular” (the original CY is “modular”). Interestingly, there are also models in the handle picture that don’t have a CY description at all. We calculated a few simple examples and found that one of them has configurations that are a plausible analogue of “teleparallel gravity” in the formulation given by Baez and Wise. This doesn’t yet mean we have a new quantum gravity model because, firstly, we only used finite groups instead of Lie groups (to keep things simple) and secondly, it isn’t clear that the action will be the gravity action. Still, it is an interesting direction.

What it needs next is to do a lot more examples. Probably any really interesting examples will involve representations of a group or quantum group that are non-unitary. New territory indeed!