327 research outputs found
Manifestly Gauge-Invariant General Relativistic Perturbation Theory: II. FRW Background and First Order
In our companion paper we identified a complete set of manifestly
gauge-invariant observables for general relativity. This was possible by
coupling the system of gravity and matter to pressureless dust which plays the
role of a dynamically coupled observer. The evolution of those observables is
governed by a physical Hamiltonian and we derived the corresponding equations
of motion. Linear perturbation theory of those equations of motion around a
general exact solution in terms of manifestly gauge invariant perturbations was
then developed. In this paper we specialise our previous results to an FRW
background which is also a solution of our modified equations of motion. We
then compare the resulting equations with those derived in standard
cosmological perturbation theory (SCPT). We exhibit the precise relation
between our manifestly gauge-invariant perturbations and the linearly
gauge-invariant variables in SCPT. We find that our equations of motion can be
cast into SCPT form plus corrections. These corrections are the trace that the
dust leaves on the system in terms of a conserved energy momentum current
density. It turns out that these corrections decay, in fact, in the late
universe they are negligible whatever the value of the conserved current. We
conclude that the addition of dust which serves as a test observer medium,
while implying modifications of Einstein's equations without dust, leads to
acceptable agreement with known results, while having the advantage that one
now talks about manifestly gauge-invariant, that is measurable, quantities,
which can be used even in perturbation theory at higher orders.Comment: 51 pages, no figure
Eigenvalues of the volume operator in loop quantum gravity
We present a simple method to calculate certain sums of the eigenvalues of
the volume operator in loop quantum gravity. We derive the asymptotic
distribution of the eigenvalues in the classical limit of very large spins
which turns out to be of a very simple form. The results can be useful for
example in the statistical approach to quantum gravity.Comment: 12 pages, version accepted in Class. Quantum Gra
Algebraic Quantum Gravity (AQG) III. Semiclassical Perturbation Theory
In the two previous papers of this series we defined a new combinatorical
approach to quantum gravity, Algebraic Quantum Gravity (AQG). We showed that
AQG reproduces the correct infinitesimal dynamics in the semiclassical limit,
provided one incorrectly substitutes the non -- Abelean group SU(2) by the
Abelean group in the calculations. The mere reason why that
substitution was performed at all is that in the non -- Abelean case the volume
operator, pivotal for the definition of the dynamics, is not diagonisable by
analytical methods. This, in contrast to the Abelean case, so far prohibited
semiclassical computations. In this paper we show why this unjustified
substitution nevertheless reproduces the correct physical result: Namely, we
introduce for the first time semiclassical perturbation theory within AQG (and
LQG) which allows to compute expectation values of interesting operators such
as the master constraint as a power series in with error control. That
is, in particular matrix elements of fractional powers of the volume operator
can be computed with extremely high precision for sufficiently large power of
in the expansion. With this new tool, the non -- Abelean
calculation, although technically more involved, is then exactly analogous to
the Abelean calculation, thus justifying the Abelean analysis in retrospect.
The results of this paper turn AQG into a calculational discipline
LTB spacetimes in terms of Dirac observables
The construction of Dirac observables, that is gauge invariant objects, in
General Relativity is technically more complicated than in other gauge theories
such as the standard model due to its more complicated gauge group which is
closely related to the group of spacetime diffeomorphisms. However, the
explicit and usually cumbersome expression of Dirac observables in terms of
gauge non invariant quantities is irrelevant if their Poisson algebra is
sufficiently simple. Precisely that can be achieved by employing the relational
formalism and a specific type of matter proposed originally by Brown and
Kucha{\v r}, namely pressureless dust fields. Moreover one is able to derive a
compact expression for a physical Hamiltonian that drives their physical time
evolution. The resulting gauge invariant Hamiltonian system is obtained by
Higgs -- ing the dust scalar fields and has an infinite number of conserved
charges which force the Goldstone bosons to decouple from the evolution. In
previous publications we have shown that explicitly for cosmological
perturbations. In this article we analyse the spherically symmetric sector of
the theory and it turns out that the solutions are in one--to--one
correspondence with the class of Lemaitre--Tolman--Bondi metrics. Therefore the
theory is capable of properly describing the whole class of gravitational
experiments that rely on the assumption of spherical symmetry.Comment: 29 pages, no figure
Properties of the Volume Operator in Loop Quantum Gravity II: Detailed Presentation
The properties of the Volume operator in Loop Quantum Gravity, as constructed
by Ashtekar and Lewandowski, are analyzed for the first time at generic
vertices of valence greater than four. The present analysis benefits from the
general simplified formula for matrix elements of the Volume operator derived
in gr-qc/0405060, making it feasible to implement it on a computer as a matrix
which is then diagonalized numerically. The resulting eigenvalues serve as a
database to investigate the spectral properties of the volume operator.
Analytical results on the spectrum at 4-valent vertices are included. This is a
companion paper to arXiv:0706.0469, providing details of the analysis presented
there.Comment: Companion to arXiv:0706.0469. Version as published in CQG in 2008.
More compact presentation. Sign factor combinatorics now much better
understood in context of oriented matroids, see arXiv:1003.2348, where also
important remarks given regarding sigma configurations. Subsequent
computations revealed some minor errors, which do not change qualitative
results but modify some numbers presented her
Born--Oppenheimer decomposition for quantum fields on quantum spacetimes
Quantum Field Theory on Curved Spacetime (QFT on CS) is a well established theoretical framework which intuitively should be a an extremely effective description of the quantum nature of matter when propagating on a given background spacetime. If one wants to take care of backreaction effects, then a theory of quantum gravity is needed. It is now widely believed that such a theory should be formulated in a non-perturbative and therefore background independent fashion. Hence, it is a priori a puzzle how a background dependent QFT on CS should emerge as a semiclassical limit out of a background independent quantum gravity theory. In this article we point out that the Born-Oppenheimer decomposition (BOD) of the Hilbert space is ideally suited in order to establish such a link, provided that the Hilbert space representation of the gravitational field algebra satisfies an important condition. If the condition is satisfied, then the framework of QFT on CS can be, in a certain sense, embedded into a theory of quantum gravity. The unique representation of the holonomy-flux algebra underlying Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) violates that condition. While it is conceivable that the condition on the representation can be relaxed, for convenience in this article we consider a new classical gravitational field algebra and a Hilbert space representation of its restriction to an algebraic graph for which the condition is satisfied. An important question that remains and for which we have only partial answers is how to construct eigenstates of the full gravity-matter Hamiltonian whose BOD is confined to a small neighbourhood of a physically interesting vacuum spacetime
Properties of the Volume Operator in Loop Quantum Gravity I: Results
We analyze the spectral properties of the volume operator of Ashtekar and
Lewandowski in Loop Quantum Gravity, which is the quantum analogue of the
classical volume expression for regions in three dimensional Riemannian space.
Our analysis considers for the first time generic graph vertices of valence
greater than four. Here we find that the geometry of the underlying vertex
characterizes the spectral properties of the volume operator, in particular the
presence of a `volume gap' (a smallest non-zero eigenvalue in the spectrum) is
found to depend on the vertex embedding. We compute the set of all
non-spatially diffeomorphic non-coplanar vertex embeddings for vertices of
valence 5--7, and argue that these sets can be used to label spatial
diffeomorphism invariant states. We observe how gauge invariance connects
vertex geometry and representation properties of the underlying gauge group in
a natural way. Analytical results on the spectrum on 4-valent vertices are
included, for which the presence of a volume gap is proved. This paper presents
our main results; details are provided by a companion paper arXiv:0706.0382v1.Comment: 36 pages, 7 figures, LaTeX. See also companion paper
arXiv:0706.0382v1. Version as published in CQG in 2008. See arXiv:1003.2348
for important remarks regarding the sigma configurations. Subsequent
computations have revealed some minor errors, which do not change the
qualitative results but modify some of the numbers presented her
On a partially reduced phase space quantisation of general relativity conformally coupled to a scalar field
The purpose of this paper is twofold: On the one hand, after a thorough
review of the matter free case, we supplement the derivations in our companion
paper on 'loop quantum gravity without the Hamiltonian constraint' with
calculational details and extend the results to standard model matter, a
cosmological constant, and non-compact spatial slices. On the other hand, we
provide a discussion on the role of observables, focussed on the situation of a
symmetry exchange, which is key to our derivation. Furthermore, we comment on
the relation of our model to reduced phase space quantisations based on
deparametrisation.Comment: 51 pages, 5 figures. v2: Gauge condition used shown to coincide with
CMC gauge. Minor clarifications and correction
Manifestly Gauge-Invariant General Relativistic Perturbation Theory: I. Foundations
Linear cosmological perturbation theory is pivotal to a theoretical
understanding of current cosmological experimental data provided e.g. by cosmic
microwave anisotropy probes. A key issue in that theory is to extract the gauge
invariant degrees of freedom which allow unambiguous comparison between theory
and experiment. When one goes beyond first (linear) order, the task of writing
the Einstein equations expanded to n'th order in terms of quantities that are
gauge invariant up to terms of higher orders becomes highly non-trivial and
cumbersome. This fact has prevented progress for instance on the issue of the
stability of linear perturbation theory and is a subject of current debate in
the literature. In this series of papers we circumvent these difficulties by
passing to a manifestly gauge invariant framework. In other words, we only
perturb gauge invariant, i.e. measurable quantities, rather than gauge variant
ones. Thus, gauge invariance is preserved non perturbatively while we construct
the perturbation theory for the equations of motion for the gauge invariant
observables to all orders. In this first paper we develop the general framework
which is based on a seminal paper due to Brown and Kuchar as well as the
realtional formalism due to Rovelli. In the second, companion, paper we apply
our general theory to FRW cosmologies and derive the deviations from the
standard treatment in linear order. As it turns out, these deviations are
negligible in the late universe, thus our theory is in agreement with the
standard treatment. However, the real strength of our formalism is that it
admits a straightforward and unambiguous, gauge invariant generalisation to
higher orders. This will also allow us to settle the stability issue in a
future publication.Comment: 77 pages, no figure
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