Related papers: On a class of 2-surface observables in general rel…
We use a trick similar to Weinberg's for adiabatic modes, in a Manton approximation for general relativity on manifolds with spatial boundary. This results in a description of the slow-time dependent solutions as null geodesics on the space…
When the vacuum Einstein equations are cast in the form of hamiltonian evolution equations, the initial data lie in the cotangent bundle of the manifold M\Sigma\ of riemannian metrics on a Cauchy hypersurface \Sigma. As in every lagrangian…
We study point particles in 2+1 dimensional first order gravity using a triangulation to fix the connection and frame-field. The Hamiltonian is reduced to a boundary term which yields the total mass. The triangulation is dynamical with…
The vacuum Einstein equations for spacetimes with two commuting spacelike Killing field symmetries are studied using the Ashtekar variables. The case of compact spacelike hypersurfaces which are three-tori is considered, and the determinant…
We study the thermodynamics of Einstein gravity with vanishing cosmological constant subjected to conformal boundary conditions. Our focus is on comparing the series of subextensive terms to predictions from thermal effective field theory,…
We introduce the description of a Wilson surface as a 2-dimensional topological quantum field theory with a 1-dimensional Hilbert space. On a closed surface, the Wilson surface theory defines a topological invariant of the principal…
The paper develops a $(2+2)$-imbedding formalism adapted to a double foliation of spacetime by a net of two intersecting families of lightlike hypersurfaces. The formalism is two-dimensionally covariant, and leads to simple, geometrically…
We show that after mapping each element of a set of second class constraints to the surface of the other ones, half of them form a subset of abelian first class constraints. The explicit form of the map is obtained considering the most…
In the paper, we consider the class of so-called endo-commutative algebras. From the identity imposed to specify this class, one can easily see that the product in this class preserves the square of elements. We give a complete…
The quantum measurement axiom dictates that physical observables and in particular the Hamiltonian must be diagonalizable and have a real spectrum. For a time-independent Hamiltonian (with a discrete spectrum) these conditions ensure the…
The derivation of the general solutions for stationary and static cylindrically symmetric Einstein spaces of Lewis form is revisited and the physical and geometrical meaning of the parameters appearing in the resulting solutions are…
We apply the Hamiltonian reduction procedure to general spacetimes of 4-dimensions in the (2+2) formalism and find privileged spacetime coordinates in which the physical Hamiltonian is expressed in true degrees of freedom only, namely, the…
A direct reformulation of the Hamiltonian formalism in terms of the intrinsic geometry of infinitely prolonged differential equations is obtained. Concepts of spatial equation and spatial-gauge symmetry of a Lagrangian system of equations…
We give a condition under which the findings of the paper cited above work well and determine the surfaces that were not considered before. In this paper, we show that a parallel mean curvature surface of a general type in a complex…
The Hamiltonian of classical anti-de Sitter gravity is a pure boundary term on-shell. If this remains true in non-perturbative quantum gravity then i) boundary observables will evolve unitarily in time and ii) the algebra of boundary…
It is shown that the Chern-Simons functional, built in the spinor representation from the initial data on spacelike hypersurfaces, is invariant with respect to infinitesimal conformal rescalings if and only if the vacuum Einstein equations…
We consider recognizable evaluations for a suitable category of oriented two-dimensional cobordisms with corners between finite unions of intervals. We call such cobordisms thin flat surfaces. An evaluation is given by a power series in two…
For a variety of diffeomorphism-invariant field theories describing hypersurface motions (such as relativistic M-branes in space-time dimension M+2) we perform a Hamiltonian reduction ``at level 0'', showing that a simple algebraic function…
The 3+1 (canonical) decomposition of all geometries admitting two-dimensional space-like surfaces is exhibited. A proposal consisting of a specific re-normalization {\bf Assumption} and an accompanying {\bf Requirement} is put forward,…
A classification of 2-dimensional surfaces imbedded in spacetime is presented, according to the algebraic properties of their shape tensor. The classification has five levels, and provides among other things a refinement of the concepts of…