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Dirac Quantization of Parametrized Field Theory
Parametrized field theory (PFT) is free field theory on flat spacetime in a
diffeomorphism invariant disguise. It describes field evolution on arbitrary
foliations of the flat spacetime instead of only the usual flat ones, by
treating the `embedding variables' which describe the foliation as dynamical
variables to be varied in the action in addition to the scalar field. A formal
Dirac quantization turns the constraints of PFT into functional Schrodinger
equations which describe evolution of quantum states from an arbitrary Cauchy
slice to an infinitesimally nearby one.This formal Schrodinger picture- based
quantization is unitarily equivalent to the standard Heisenberg picture based
Fock quantization of the free scalar field if scalar field evolution along
arbitrary foliations is unitarily implemented on the Fock space. Torre and
Varadarajan (TV) showed that for generic foliations emanating from a flat
initial slice in spacetimes of dimension greater than 2, evolution is not
unitarily implemented, thus implying an obstruction to Dirac quantization.
We construct a Dirac quantization of PFT,unitarily equivalent to the standard
Fock quantization, using techniques from Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) which are
powerful enough to super-cede the no- go implications of the TV results. The
key features of our quantization include an LQG type representation for the
embedding variables, embedding dependent Fock spaces for the scalar field, an
anomaly free representation of (a generalization of) the finite transformations
generated by the constraints and group averaging techniques. The difference
between 2 and higher dimensions is that in the latter, only finite gauge
transformations are defined in the quantum theory, not the infinitesimal ones.Comment: 33 page
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