A rather non-standard 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 noncommutativity. 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 analyze 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 semi-classical regime.

In this paper, a version of polymer quantum mechanics, which is inspired by loop quantum gravity, is considered and shown to be equivalent, in a precise sense, to the standard, experimentally tested, Schrödinger quantum mechanics. The kinematical cornerstone of our framework is the so called polymer representation of the Heisenberg-Weyl (H-W) algebra, which is the starting point of the construction. The dynamics is constructed as a continuum limit of effective theories characterized by a scale, and requires a renormalization of the inner product. The result is a physical Hilbert space in which the continuum Hamiltonian can be represented and that is unitarily equivalent to the Schrödinger representation of quantum mechanics. As a concrete implementation of our formalism, the simple harmonic oscillator is fully developed.1 In loop quantum cosmology, the minimum area gap of the full quantum gravity theory imposes such a scale [2]. 2 This corresponds to the 'position representation' of the polymeric quantum mechanics. In most treatments, the Hilbert space is described in the 'momentum representation' where the basis is given by quasiperiodic

Topological gravity is the reduction of Einstein's theory to spacetimes with vanishing curvature, but with global degrees of freedom related to the topology of the universe. We present an exact Hamiltonian lattice theory for topological gravity, which admits translations of the lattice sites as a gauge symmetry. There are additional symmetries, not present in Einstein's theory, which kill the local degrees of freedom. We show that these symmetries can be fixed by choosing a gauge where the torsion is equal to zero. In this gauge, the theory describes flat space-times. We propose two methods to advance towards the holy grail of lattice gravity: A Hamiltonian lattice theory for curved space-times, with first-class translation constraints.