ON THE AREA OPERATORS OF THE HUSAIN–KUCHAŘ–ROVELLI MODEL AND CANONICAL/LOOP QUANTUM GRAVITY

We investigate the relation between an operative definition of the area of a surface specified by matter fields and the area operators recently introduced in the canonical/loop approach to quantum gravity and in Rovelli's variant of the Husain–Kuchař quantum gravity toy model. The results suggest that the discreteness of the spectra of the area operators might not be observable.