Physical states of the quantum conformal factor

Journal Article · Mon Mar 31 23:00:00 EST 1997 · Physical Review, D

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.55.4770· OSTI ID:554242

Antoniadis, I ^[1]; Mazur, P O ^[2]; Mottola, E ^[3]

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1. Centre de Physique Theorique, Ecole Polytechnique, 91128 Palaiseau (France)
2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208 (United States)
3. Theoretical Division, T-8, Mail Stop B285, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545 (United States)

The conformal factor of the spacetime metric becomes dynamical due to the trace anomaly of matter fields. Its dynamics is described by an effective action which we quantize by canonical methods on the Einstein universe R{times}S{sup 3}. We find an infinite tower of discrete states which satisfy the constraints of quantum diffeomorphism invariance. These physical states are in one-to-one correspondence with operators constructed by integrating integer powers of the Ricci scalar. {copyright} {ital 1997} {ital The American Physical Society}

• OSTI ID: 554242
• Journal Information: Physical Review, D, Journal Name: Physical Review, D Journal Issue: 8 Vol. 55; ISSN PRVDAQ; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

66 PHYSICS
CONFORMAL GROUPS
MATTER
METRICS
QUANTIZATION
QUANTUM GRAVITY
SPACE-TIME
UNIVERSE