English

Note on $SU(2)$ isolated horizon

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2020-04-28 v3

Abstract

We point out that the symplectic structure, written in terms of the Sen-Ashtekar-Immirzi-Barbero variables, of a spacetime admitting an isolated horizon as the inner boundary, involves a positive constant parameter, say σ\sigma, if γ±i\gamma\neq\pm i, where γ\gamma is the Barbero-Immirzi parameter. The parameter σ\sigma represents the rescaling freedom that characterizes the equivalence class of null generators of the isolated horizon. We reiterate the fact that the laws of mechanics associated with the isolated horizon does not depend on the choice of σ\sigma and, in particular, while one uses the value of standard surface gravity as input, that does not fix σ\sigma to a particular value. This fact contradicts the claims made in certain parts of the concerned literature that we duly refer to. We do the calculations by taking Schwarzschild metric as an example so that the contradiction with the referred literature, where similar approaches were adopted, becomes apparent. The contribution to the symplectic structure that comes from the isolated horizon, diverges for σ2=(1+γ2)1\sigma^2=(1+\gamma^2)^{-1}, implying that the rescaling symmetry of the isolated horizon is violated for any real γ\gamma. Since the quantum theory of SU(2)SU(2) isolated horizon in the LQG framework exists only for real values of γ\gamma, it is founded on this flawed classical setup. Nevertheless, if the flaw is ignored, then two different viewpoints persist in the literature for entropy calculation. We highlight the main features of those approaches and point out why one is logically viable and the other is not.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1809.03483,
  title  = {Note on $SU(2)$ isolated horizon},
  author = {Abhishek Majhi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1809.03483},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

12 pages, version accepted for publication

R2 v1 2026-06-23T04:01:12.839Z