English

Real Tunneling Solutions and the Hartle-Hawking Wave Function

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2010-04-28 v1 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

A real tunneling solution is an instanton for the Hartle-Hawking path integral with vanishing extrinsic curvature (vanishing ``momentum'') at the boundary. Since the final momentum is fixed, its conjugate cannot be specified freely; consequently, such an instanton will contribute to the wave function at only one or a few isolated spatial geometries. I show that these geometries are the extrema of the Hartle-Hawking wave function in the semiclassical approximation, and provide some evidence that with a suitable choice of time parameter, these extrema are the maxima of the wave function at a fixed time.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.gr-qc/9301006,
  title  = {Real Tunneling Solutions and the Hartle-Hawking Wave Function},
  author = {S. Carlip},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:gr-qc/9301006},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

10 pages, LaTeX, UCD-92-30

R2 v1 2026-07-22T12:48:08.496Z