Yang-Mills theory in three dimensions as a quantum gravity theory

We perform the dual transformation of theYang-Mills theory in three dimensions using the Wilson action on the cubic lattice. The dual lattice is made of tetrahedra triangulating a 3-dimensional curved manifold but which is embedded into a flat 6-dimensional space [for the SU(2) gauge group]. In the continuum limit, the theory can be reformulated in terms of 6-component gauge-invariant scalar fields having the meaning of the external coordinates of the dual lattice sites. These 6-component fields induce a metric and a curvature of the 3-dimensional dual-color space. The Yang-Mills theory can also be rewritten as a quantum gravity theory with the Einstein-Hilbert action but with a purely imaginary Newton constant plus a homogeneous “ether” term. The theory can be formulated in a gauge-invariant and local form without explicit color degrees of freedom.