Ashtekar variables are a reformulation of General Relativity used primarily in the context of canonical gravity and loop quantum gravity. Introduced by the physicist Abhay Ashtekar in the mid-1980s, these variables provide a new framework for understanding the geometry of spacetime and the nature of gravitational fields. In General Relativity, the dynamics of the gravitational field are typically described using the metric tensor, which can be complex and challenging to handle mathematically.
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