A “black hole sector” of nonperturbative canonical quantum gravity is introduced. The quantum black hole degrees of freedom are shown to be described by a Chern-Simons field theory on the horizon. It is shown that the entropy of a large nonrotating black hole is proportional to its horizon area. The constant of proportionality depends upon the Immirzi parameter, which fixes the spectrum of the area operator in loop quantum gravity; an appropriate choice of this parameter gives the Bekenstein-Hawking formula $S=A/4\mathrm{}{\ell }_P^2$. With the same choice of the Immirzi parameter, this result also holds for black holes carrying electric or dilatonic charge, which are not necessarily near extremal.

A small simplification based on well-motivated approximations is shown to make loop quantum cosmology of the $k=0$ Friedman-Robertson-Walker model (with a massless scalar field) exactly soluble. Analytical methods are then used i) to show that the quantum bounce is generic; ii) to establish that the matter density has an absolute upper bound which, furthermore, equals the critical density that first emerged in numerical simulations and effective equations; iii) to bring out the precise sense in which the Wheeler-DeWitt theory approximates loop quantum cosmology and the sense in which this approximation fails; and iv) to show that discreteness underlying loop quantum cosmology is fundamental. Finally, the model is compared to analogous discussions in the literature and it is pointed out that some of their expectations do not survive a more careful examination. An effort has been made to make the underlying structure transparent also to those who are not familiar with details of loop quantum gravity.

The loop quantization of the Schwarzschild interior region, as described by a homogeneous anisotropic Kantowski–Sachs model, is re-examined. As several studies of different—inequivalent—loop quantizations have shown, to date there exists no fully satisfactory quantum theory for this model. This fact poses challenges to the validity of some scenarios to address the black hole information problem. Here we put forward a novel viewpoint to construct the quantum theory that builds from some of the models available in the literature. The final picture is a quantum theory that is both independent of any auxiliary structure and possesses a correct low curvature limit. It represents a subtle but non-trivial modification of the original prescription given by Ashtekar and Bojowald. It is shown that the quantum gravitational constraint is well defined past the singularity and that its effective dynamics possesses a bounce into an expanding regime. The classical singularity is avoided, and a semiclassical spacetime satisfying vacuum Einstein’s equations is recovered on the ‘other side’ of the bounce. We argue that such a metric represents the interior region of a white-hole spacetime, but for which the corresponding ‘white hole mass’ differs from the original black hole mass. Furthermore, we find that the value of the white hole mass is proportional to the third power of the starting black hole mass.

A rather nonstandard quantum representation of the canonical commutation relations of quantum mechanics systems, known as the polymer representation, has gained some attention in recent years, due to its possible relation with Planck scale physics. In particular, this approach has been followed in a symmetric sector of loop quantum gravity known as loop quantum cosmology. Here we explore different aspects of the relation between the ordinary Schrödinger theory and the polymer description. The paper has two parts. In the first one, we derive the polymer quantum mechanics starting from the ordinary Schrödinger theory and show that the polymer description arises as an appropriate limit. In the second part we consider the continuum limit of this theory, namely, the reverse process in which one starts from the discrete theory and tries to recover back the ordinary Schrödinger quantum mechanics. We consider several examples of interest, including the harmonic oscillator, the free particle, and a simple cosmological model.

The basic framework for a systematic construction of a quantum theory of Riemannian geometry was introduced recently. The quantum versions of Riemannian structures - such as triad and area operators - exhibit a non-commutativity. At first sight, this feature is surprising because it implies that the framework does not admit a triad representation. To better understand this property and to reconcile it with intuition, we analyse its origin in detail. In particular, a careful study of the underlying phase space is made and the feature is traced back to the classical theory; there is no anomaly associated with quantization. We also indicate why the uncertainties associated with this non-commutativity become negligible in the semiclassical regime.