Canonical Reduction of Gravity: from General Covariance to Dirac Observables and post-Minkowskian Background-Independent Gravitational Waves

The status of canonical reduction for metric and tetrad gravity in space-times of the Christodoulou-Klainermann type, where the ADM energy rules the time evolution, is reviewed. Since in these space-times there is an asymptotic Minkowski metric at spatial infinity, it is possible to define a Hamiltonian linearization in a completely fixed (non harmonic) 3-orthogonal gauge without introducing a background metric. Post-Minkowskian background-independent gravitational waves are obtained as solutions of the linearized Hamilton equations.Comment: 9 pages, Talk given at the Symposium QTS3 on Quantum Theory and Symmetries, Cincinnati, September, 10-14 200

N- and 1-time Classical Description of N-body Relativistic Kinematics and the Electromagnetic Interaction

The intrinsic covariant 1-time description (rest-frame instant form) for N relativistic scalar particles is defined. The system of N charged scalar particles plus the electromagnetic field is described in this way: the study of its Dirac observables allows the extraction of the Coulomb potential from field theory and the regularization of the classical self-energy by using Grassmann-valued electric charges. The 1-time covariant relativistic statistical mechanics is defined

On the Anticipatory Aspects of the Four Interactions: what the Known Classical and Semi-Classical Solutions Teach us

The four (electro-magnetic, weak, strong and gravitational) interactions are described by singular Lagrangians and by Dirac-Bergmann theory of Hamiltonian constraints. As a consequence a subset of the original configuration variables are {\it gauge variables}, not determined by the equations of motion. Only at the Hamiltonian level it is possible to separate the gauge variables from the deterministic physical degrees of freedom, the {\it Dirac observables}, and to formulate a well posed Cauchy problem for them both in special and general relativity. Then the requirement of {\it causality} dictates the choice of {\it retarded} solutions at the classical level. However both the problems of the classical theory of the electron, leading to the choice of ${1\over 2} (retarded + advanced)$ solutions, and the regularization of quantum field teory, leading to the Feynman propagator, introduce {\it anticipatory} aspects. The determination of the relativistic Darwin potential as a semi-classical approximation to the Lienard-Wiechert solution for particles with Grassmann-valued electric charges, regularizing the Coulomb self-energies, shows that these anticipatory effects live beyond the semi-classical approximation (tree level) under the form of radiative corrections, at least for the electro-magnetic interaction.Comment: 12 pages, Talk and "best contribution" at The Sixth International Conference on Computing Anticipatory Systems CASYS'03, Liege August 11-16, 200

Aspects of Galilean and Relativistic Particle Mechanics with Dirac's Constraints

Relevant physical models are described by singular Lagrangians, so that their Hamiltonian description is based on the Dirac theory of constraints. The qualitative aspects of this theory are now understood, in particular the role of the Shanmugadhasan canonical transformation in the determination of a canonical basis of Dirac's observables allowing the elimination of gauge degrees of freedom from the classical description of physical systems. This programme was initiated by Dirac for the electromagnetic field with charged fermions. Now Dirac's observables for Yang-Mills theory with fermions (whose typical application is QCD) have been found in suitable function spaces where the Gribov ambiguity is absent. Also the ones for the Abelian Higgs model are known and those for the $SU(2) \times U(1)$ electroweak theory with fermions are going to be found with the same method working for the Abelian case. The main task along these lines will now be the search of Dirac's observables for tetrad gravity in the case of asymptotically flat 3-manifolds. The philosophy behind this approach is ``first reduce, then quantize": this requires a global symplectic separation of the physical variables from the gauge ones so that the role of differential geometry applied to smooth field configurations is dominating, in contrast with the standard approach of ``first quantizing, then reducing", where, in the case of gauge field theory, the reduction process takes place on distributional field configurations, which dominate in quantum measures. This global separation has been accomplished till now, at least at a heuristic level, and one is going to have a classical (pseudoclassical for the fermion) variables basis for the physical description of the $SU(3)\times SU(2)\times U(1)$ standard model; instead, with tetrad gravity one expects toComment: Talk given at the Conference ``Theories of Fundamental Interactions", Maynooth (Ireland), May 1995. (LaTeX file