English

Affine group representation formalism for four dimensional, Lorentzian, quantum gravity

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2013-02-28 v3

Abstract

Within the context of the Ashtekar variables, the Hamiltonian constraint of four-dimensional pure General Relativity with cosmological constant, Λ\Lambda, is reexpressed as an affine algebra with the commutator of the imaginary part of the Chern-Simons functional, QQ, and the positive-definite volume element. This demonstrates that the affine algebra quantization program of Klauder can indeed be applicable to the full Lorentzian signature theory of quantum gravity with non-vanishing cosmological constant; and it facilitates the construction of solutions to all of the constraints. Unitary, irreducible representations of the affine group exhibit a natural Hilbert space structure, and coherent states and other physical states can be generated from a fiducial state. It is also intriguing that formulation of the Hamiltonian constraint or Wheeler-DeWitt equation as an affine algebra requires a non-vanishing cosmological constant; and a fundamental uncertainty relation of the form ΔV<V>ΔQ2πΛLPlanck2\frac{\Delta{V}}{<{V}>}\Delta {Q}\geq 2\pi \Lambda L^2_{Planck} (wherein VV is the total volume) may apply to all physical states of quantum gravity.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1207.7263,
  title  = {Affine group representation formalism for four dimensional, Lorentzian, quantum gravity},
  author = {Chou Ching-Yi and Eyo Ita and Chopin Soo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1207.7263},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

13 pages. Revised version

R2 v1 2026-06-21T21:44:04.966Z