English

On a class of 2-surface observables in general relativity

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2015-06-25 v2

Abstract

The boundary conditions for canonical vacuum general relativity is investigated at the quasi-local level. It is shown that fixing the area element on the 2- surface S (rather than the induced 2-metric) is enough to have a well defined constraint algebra, and a well defined Poisson algebra of basic Hamiltonians parameterized by shifts that are tangent to and divergence-free on $. The evolution equations preserve these boundary conditions and the value of the basic Hamiltonian gives 2+2 covariant, gauge-invariant 2-surface observables. The meaning of these observables is also discussed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.gr-qc/0511059,
  title  = {On a class of 2-surface observables in general relativity},
  author = {Laszlo B Szabados},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:gr-qc/0511059},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

11 pages, a discussion of the observables in stationary spacetimes is included, new references are added, typos corrected