Area spectrum in Lorentz covariant loop gravity - art. no. 044023

We use the manifestly Lorentz covariant canonical formalism to evaluate eig envalues of the area operator, acting on Wilson lines. To this end we modif y the standard definition of the loop states to make it applicable to the p resent case of noncommutative connections. The area operator is diagonalize d by using the usual shift ambiguity in the definition of the connection. T he eigenvalues are then expressed through quadratic Casimir operators. No d ependence on the Immirzi parameter appears.