Schr\"{o}dinger from Wheeler-DeWitt: The Issues of Time and Inner Product in Canonical Quantum Gravity

TL;DR

This paper explores how the Wheeler-DeWitt equation in quantum gravity can be reformulated to resemble the Schrödinger equation, providing insights into the problem of time and probability interpretation in canonical quantum gravity.

Contribution

It demonstrates that by introducing embedding fields, the WDW equation can be made Schrödinger-like, clarifying the Hilbert space structure and the role of time in quantum gravity.

Findings

The WDW equation can be recast as Schrödinger-like with embedding coordinates.

A suitable Hilbert space with probability interpretation is constructed.

The approach applies to general relativity, revealing the role of embedding fields and constraints.

Abstract

The wave-function in quantum gravity is supposed to obey the Wheeler-DeWitt (WDW) equation, however there is neither a satisfactory probability interpretation nor a successful solution to the problem of time in the WDW framework. To gain some insight on these issues we compare quantization of ordinary systems, first in the usual way having the Schr\"{o}dinger equation and second by promoting them as parametrized theories by introducing embedding coordinate fields, which yields first class constraints and the WDW equation. We observe that the time evolution in the WDW framework can be described with respect to the embedding coordinates, where the WDW equation becomes Schr\"{o}dinger like, i.e. it involves first order timelike functional derivatives. Moreover, the equivalence with the ordinary quantization procedure determines a suitable Hilbert space with a viable probability interpretation. We then apply the same construction to general relativity by adding embedding fields without any prior coordinate choice. The reparametrized general relativity has two different types of diffeomorphism invariance, which arises from world-volume and target-space reparametrizations. As in the case of ordinary systems, the time evolution can be described with respect to the embedding fields and the WDW equation becomes Schr\"{o}dinger like; the construction is almost identical to an ordinary parametrized field theory in terms of time evolution and Hilbert space structure. However, this time, the constraint algebra enforces the wave-function to be in a subspace of states annihilated by an operator that can be identified as the Hamiltonian. The implications of these results for the canonical quantization program, and in particular for the minisuperspace quantum cosmology, are discussed.