ON THE CANONICAL APPROACH TO QUANTUM GRAVITY

1982
12 pages
Published in:
  • Phys.Rev.D 26 (1982) 3342-3353

Citations per year

1983199320032013202302468
Abstract: (APS)
General relativity has the property that, under the natural projection mapping, the image of the constraint surface in the phase space is a proper subset of the configuration space. This feature is not shared by other field theories of direct physical interest such as the Yang-Mills theory, nor by constrained systems which have been modeled after general relativity and analyzed in detail. Therefore, to gain insight into this feature, a new example with a finite number of degrees of freedom is introduced and quantized. The analysis suggests that, in the canonical approach, the reduced phase-space method is likely to yield an incomplete description of quantum gravity. In particular, contrary to the indication provided by this method, quantum gravity may admit states with negative energies.
  • QUANTUM GRAVITY
  • general relativity
  • KINEMATICS: PHASE SPACE
  • QUANTIZATION
  • FIELD THEORY: SPACE-TIME
  • BOUNDARY CONDITION
  • QUANTUM MECHANICS
  • EFFECT: TUNNELING
  • FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS: linear space