Towards computational insights into the large-scale structure of spin   foams
  Understanding the large-scale physics is crucial for the spin foam approach to quantum gravity. We tackle this challenge from a statistical physics perspective using simplified, yet feature-rich models. In particular, this allows us to explicitly answer whether broken symmetries will be restored by renormalization: We observe a weak phase transition in both Migdal-Kadanoff and tensor network renormalization. In this work we give a concise presentation of the concepts, results and promises of this new direction of research. 
Bianca Dittrich and Frank C Eckert
gr-qc cond-mat.str-el hep-lat quant-ph