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Abstract

Fruitful ideas on how to quantize gravity are few and far between. In this paper, we give a complete description of a recently introduced non-perturbative gravitational path integral whose continuum limit has already been investigated extensively in d < 4, with promising results. It is based on a simplicial regularization of Lorentzian spacetimes and, most importantly, possesses a well-defined, non-perturbative Wick rotation. We present a detailed analysis of the geometric and mathematical properties of the discretized model in d = 3, 4. This includes a derivation of Lorentzian simplicial manifold constraints, the gravitational actions and their Wick rotation. We define a transfer matrix for the system and show that it leads to a well-defined self-adjoint Hamiltonian. In view of numerical simulations, we also suggest sets of Lorentzian Monte Carlo moves. We demonstrate that certain pathological phases found previously in Euclidean models of dynamical riangulations cannot be realized in the Lorentzian case. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved