Three-Dimensional Gravity

Does anyone have any references that discuss gravity in three-dimensions? I'm trying to make my way through some papers by Witten relating $SL(2,\mathbb{C})$ Chern-Simons theory and gravity in three spacetime dimensions and would like some explanation about the latter of the two topics. Thanks.

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Please tell us which papers you have in mind precisely so that we don't give you references you already have. There's e.g. this arxiv.org/abs/0706.3359 and this adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1988NuPhB.311...46W –  Marek May 14 '11 at 10:21
Yes, those are precisely the two papers I'm starting with. I'm wondering if there are any papers/books which lay out GR in 3 spacetime dimensions. I am only familiar with Carroll's book, Wald, and MTW. I have seen Carlip's book, but still waiting for it to be returned to the library. –  klw1026 May 14 '11 at 16:02

2 Answers

The t'Hooft references started the modern field, and they are in my opinion the best for first learning the subject, because they are self-contained and they allow a full simulation of the classical dynamics. These are taken from t'Hooft's web page:

The last paper is available online, and gives a complete numerical implementation and numerical results.

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Steve Carlip wrote a book, quantum gravity in 2+1 dimension. He also has a review article on Living Review.

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