On area spectrum in the Faddeev gravity
  We consider Faddeev formulation of gravity, in which the metric is bilinear of $d = 10$ 4-vector fields. A unique feature of this formulation is that the action remains finite for the discontinuous fields (although continuity is recovered on the equations of motion). This means that the spacetime can be decomposed into the 4-simplices virtually not coinciding on their common faces, that is, independent. This allows, in particular, to consider a surface as consisting of a set of virtually independent elementary pieces (2-simplices). Then the spectrum of surface area is the sum of the spectra of independent elementary areas. We use connection representation of the Faddeev action for the piecewise flat (simplicial) manifold earlier proposed in our work. The spectrum of elementary areas is the spectrum of the field bilinears which are canonically conjugate to the orthogonal connection matrices. We find that the elementary area spectrum is proportional to the Barbero-Immirzi parameter $\gamma$ in the Faddeev gravity and is similar to the spectrum of the angular momentum in the space with the dimension $d - 2$. Knowing this spectrum allows to estimate statistical black hole entropy. Requiring that this entropy coincide with the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy gives the equation, known in the literature. This equation allows to estimate $\gamma$ for arbitrary $d$, in particular, $\gamma = 0.39...$ for genuine $d = 10$. 
V.M. Khatsymovsky
gr-qc