Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Scientific paper
1993-04-05
in Gravitation and Quantizations: Proceedings of the 1992 Les Houches Summer School, ed. by B. Julia and J. Zinn-Justin, North
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
183pages, UCSB92-21, (corrected macro calls)
Scientific paper
These are the author's lectures at the 1992 Les Houches Summer School, ``Gravitation and Quantizations''. They develop a generalized sum-over-histories quantum mechanics for quantum cosmology that does not require either a preferred notion of time or a definition of measurement. The ``post-Everett'' quantum mechanics of closed systems is reviewed. Generalized quantum theories are defined by three elements (1) the set of fine-grained histories of the closed system which are its most refined possible description, (2) the allowed coarse grainings which are partitions of the fine-grained histories into classes, and (3) a decoherence functional which measures interference between coarse grained histories. Probabilities are assigned to sets of alternative coarse-grained histories that decohere as a consequence of the closed system's dynamics and initial condition. Generalized sum-over histories quantum theories are constructed for non-relativistic quantum mechanics, abelian gauge theories, a single relativistic world line, and for general relativity. For relativity the fine-grained histories are four-metrics and matter fields. Coarse grainings are four-dimensional diffeomorphism invariant partitions of these. The decoherence function is expressed in sum-over-histories form. The quantum mechanics of spacetime is thus expressed in fully spacetime form. The coarse-grainings are most general notion of alternative for quantum theory expressible in spacetime terms. Hamiltonian quantum mechanics of matter fields with its notion of unitarily evolving state on a spacelike surface is recovered as an approximation to this generalized quantum mechanics appropriate for those initial conditions and coarse-grainings such that spacetime geometry
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