Discrete canonical analysis of three dimensional gravity with cosmological constant

Abstract

We discuss the interplay between standard canonical analysis and canonical discretization in three-dimensional gravity with cosmological constant. By using the Hamiltonian analysis, we find that the continuum local symmetries of the theory are given by the on-shell space-time diffeomorphisms, which at the action level, corresponds to the Kalb-Ramond transformations. At the time of discretization, although this symmetry is explicitly broken, we prove that the theory still preserves certain gauge freedom generated by a constant curvature relation in terms of holonomies and the Gauss's law in the lattice approach.