In this work, we investigate the 4d path integral for Euclidean quantum gravity on a hypercubic lattice, as given by the Spin Foam model by Engle, Pereira, Rovelli, Livine, Freidel and Krasnov (EPRL-FK). To tackle the problem, we restrict to a set of quantum geometries that reflects the large amount of lattice symmetries. In particular, the sum over intertwiners is restricted to quantum cuboids, i.e. coherent intertwiners which describe a cuboidal geometry in the large-j limit.Using asymptotic expressions for the vertex amplitude, we find several interesting properties of the state sum. First of all, the value of coupling constants in the amplitude functions determines whether geometric or non-geometric configurations dominate the path integral. Secondly, there is a critical value of the coupling constant α, which separates two phases. In both phases, the diffeomorphism symmetry appears to be broken. In one, the dominant contribution comes from highly irregular, in the other from highly regular configurations, both describing flat Euclidean space with small quantum fluctuations around them, viewed in different coordinate systems. On the critical point diffeomorphism symmetry is nearly restored, however.Thirdly, we use the state sum to compute the physical norm of kinematical states, i.e. their norm in the physical Hilbert space. We find that states which describe boundary geometry with high torsion have exponentially suppressed physical norm. We argue that this allows one to exclude them from the state sum in calculations.
I. MOTIVATIONThe spin foam approach has been developed to give a rigorous meaning to the path integral for quantum gravity (see [1] for a review). Its central idea rests on the observation that the first order formalism of GR can be rewritten as a certain constrained topological theory [2,3], dubbed "BF theory". A quantization choice for these constraints is what specifies the spin foam model, and in recent years there have been several proposals [4][5][6][7]. A popular choice has emerged in the so-called EPRL-FK model [5,8,9], which possesses quite useful properties. In particular, the resulting amplitude has an asymptotic expression for large quantum numbers which reproduces the Regge action [10][11][12]. Furthermore, the resulting path integral for the EPRL-FK model naturally has boundary states which resemble the spin network states from canonical loop quantum gravity [13][14][15], which is why it has been coined "covariant loop quantum gravity" ([16], see also [17,18]).There are several open questions, however. While there are numerous results available which elucidate the property of a single vertex amplitude, very little is known about the behaviour of the whole path integral.1 In particular, it is the realm of many building blocks which is of utmost importance if one wants to understand the * benjamin.bahr@desy.de † sebastian.steinhaus@desy.de 1 There are some results on the asymptotic expression for more than one vertex [19,20], as well as self-energy calculations [21].continuum limi...