English

Group Averaging of massless scalar fields in 1+1 de Sitter

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2009-01-16 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Perturbative gravity in global de Sitter space is subject to so-called linearization stability constraints: If they are to couple consistently to the gravitational field, quantum states must be invariant under the de Sitter isometries. While standard Fock spaces contain no de Sitter-invariant states apart from (possibly) the vacuum, a full Hilbert space of de Sitter-invariant quantum states can be constructed via group averaging techiniques. We re-examine the simple toy model of de Sitter group averaging given by the free 1+1 scalar field, expanding on an earlier analysis by Higuchi. Our purpose is twofold: to include the scalar zero-mode, and to explicitly count the number of de Sitter-invariant states as a function of an appropriately defined energy.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0808.2174,
  title  = {Group Averaging of massless scalar fields in 1+1 de Sitter},
  author = {Donald Marolf and Ian A. Morrison},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0808.2174},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

14 pages, accepted to Classical and Quantum Gravity