# Integrable structures and the quantization of free null initial data for gravity

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a new set of variables with simple Poisson brackets for null initial data in vacuum gravity, facilitating potential quantization, especially by leveraging integrable structures in cylindrically symmetric cases.

## Contribution

It constructs a transformation at the cylindrically symmetric level that maps initial data to a form with an exactly quantizable Poisson algebra, generalizing to arbitrary gravitational fields.

## Key findings

- Simplified Poisson brackets for null initial data.
- Transformation to an exactly quantizable algebra in cylindrical symmetry.
- Potential for extending quantization methods to general gravitational fields.

## Abstract

Variables for constraint free null canonical vacuum general relativity are presented which have simple Poisson brackets that facilitate quantization. Free initial data for vacuum general relativity on a pair of intersecting null hypersurfaces has been known since the 1960s. These consist of the "main" data which are set on the bulk of the two null hypersurfaces, and additional "surface" data set only on their intersection 2-surface. More recently the complete set of Poisson brackets of such data has been obtained. However the complexity of these brackets is an obstacle to their quantization. Part of this difficulty may be overcome using methods from the treatment of cylindrically symmetric gravity. Specializing from general to cylindrically symmetric solutions changes the Poisson algebra of the null initial data surprisingly little, but cylindrically symmetric vacuum general relativity is an integrable system, making powerful tools available. Here a transformation is constructed at the cylindrically symmetric level which maps the main initial data to new data forming a Poisson algebra for which an exact deformation quantization is known. (Although an auxiliary condition on the data has been quantized only in the asymptotically flat case, and a suitable representation of the algebra of quantum data by operators on a Hilbert space has not yet been found.) The definition of the new main data generalizes naturally to arbitrary, symmetryless gravitational fields, with the Poisson brackets retaining their simplicity. The corresponding generalization of the quantization is however ambiguous and requires further analysis.