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Physical state condition in quantum general relativity as a consequence of BRST symmetry

Michele Castellana1 and Giovanni Montani2,3,4

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Quantization of systems with constraints can be carried out with several methods. In the Dirac formulation the classical generators of gauge transformations are required to annihilate physical quantum states to ensure their gauge invariance. Carrying on BRST symmetry it is possible to get a condition on physical states which, different from the Dirac method, requires them to be invariant under the BRST transformation. Employing this method for the action of general relativity expressed in terms of the spin connection and tetrad fields with path integral methods, we construct the generator of the BRST transformation associated with the underlying local Lorentz symmetry of the theory and write a physical state condition following from BRST invariance. This derivation is based on the general results on the dependence of the effective action used in path integrals and consequently of Green's functions on the gauge-fixing functionals used in the DeWitt–Faddeev–Popov method. The condition we gain differs from the one obtained within Ashtekar's canonical formulation, showing how we recover the latter only by a suitable choice of the gauge-fixing functionals. Finally we discuss how it should be possible to obtain all of the requested physical state conditions associated with all the underlying gauge symmetries of the classical theory using our approach.


PACS

04.60.Ds Canonical quantization

04.20.-q Classical general relativity

11.30.Cp Lorentz and Poincare invariance

MSC

81T13 Yang-Mills and other gauge theories (See also 53C07, 58E15)

83Cxx General relativity

70S10 Symmetries and conservation laws

Subjects

Gravitation and cosmology

Particle physics and field theory

Dates

Issue 10 (21 May 2008)

Received 11 March 2008, in final form 12 March 2008

Published 7 May 2008


A Corrigendum for this article has been published in 2008 Class. Quantum Grav. 25 149802


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