arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Petr Hajicek.
Preliminary version No.~2 of the lecture notes for the talk ``Quantum theory of gravitational collapse'' given at the 271. WE-Heraeus-Seminar ``Aspects of Quantum Gravity'' at Bad Honnef, 25 February--1 March 2002
We discuss a model describing exactly a thin spherically symmetric shell of matter with zero rest mass. We derive the reduced formulation of this system in which the variables are embeddings, their conjugate momenta, and Dirac observables. A non-perturbative quantum theory of this model is then constructed, leading to a unitary dynamics. As a consequence of unitarity, the classical singularity is fully avoided in the quantum theory.
Global problems associated with the transformation from the Arnowitt, Deser and Misner (ADM) to the Kuchař variables are studied. Two models are considered: The Friedmann cosmology with scalar matter and the torus sector of the 2+1 gravity. For the Friedmann model, the transformations to the Kuchař description corresponding to three different popular time coordinates are shown to exist on the whole ADM phase space, which becomes a proper subset of the Kuchař phase spaces. The 2+1 gravity model is shown to admit a description by embedding variables everywhere, even at the points with additional symmetry. The transformation from the Kuchař to the ADM description is, however, many-to-one there, and so the two descriptions are inequivalent for this model, too. The most interesting result is that the new constraint surface is free from the conical singularity and the new dynamical equations are linearization stable. However, some residual pathology persists in the Kuchař description.
This paper is an extended version of the talk given at 19th Texas Symposium of Relativistic Astrophysics and Cosmology, Paris, 1998. It reviews of some recent work; mathematical details are skipped. It is well-known that a choice of gauge in generally covariant models has a twofold pupose: not only to render the dynamics unique, but also to define the spacetime points. A geometric way of choosing gauge that is not based on coordinate conditions---the so-called covariant gauge fixing---is described. After a covariant gauge fixing, the dynamics is unique and the background manifold points are well-defined, but the description remains invariant with respect to all diffeomorphisms of the background manifold. Transformations between different covariant gauge fixings form the well-known Bergmann-Komar group. Each covariant gauge fixing determines a so-called Kuchař decomposition. The construction of the quantum theory is based on the Kuchař form of the action and the Dirac method of operator constraints. It is demonstrated that the Bergmann-Komar group is too large to be implementable by unitary maps in the quantum domain.
The discussion is limited to first-class parametrized systems, where the definition of time evolution and observables is not trivial, and to finite dimensional systems in order that technicalities do not obscure the conceptual framework. The existence of reasonable true, or physical, degrees of freedom is rigorously defined and called {\em local reducibility}. A proof is given that any locally reducible system admits a complete set of perennials. For locally reducible systems, the most general construction of time evolution in the Schroedinger and Heisenberg form that uses only geometry of the phase space is described. The time shifts are not required to be 1symmetries. A relation between perennials and observables of the Schroedinger or Heisenberg type results: such observables can be identified with certain classes of perennials and the structure of the classes depends on the time evolution. The time evolution between two non-global transversal surfaces is studied. The problem is posed and solved within the framework of the ordinary quantum mechanics. The resulting non-unitarity is different from that known in the field theory (Hawking effect): state norms need not be preserved so that the system can be lost during the evolution of this kind.