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General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Title: Dominant Topologies in Euclidean Quantum Gravity

Authors: S. Carlip
Abstract: The dominant topologies in the Euclidean path integral for quantum gravity differ sharply according on the sign of the cosmological constant. For $\Lambda>0$, saddle points can occur only for topologies with vanishing first Betti number and finite fundamental group. For $\Lambda<0$, on the other hand, the path integral is dominated by topologies with extremely complicated fundamental groups; while the contribution of each individual manifold is strongly suppressed, the ``density of topologies'' grows fast enough to overwhelm this suppression. The value $\Lambda=0$ is thus a sort of boundary between phases in the sum over topologies. I discuss some implications for the cosmological constant problem and the Hartle-Hawking wave function.
Comments: 14 pages, LaTeX. Minor additions (computability, relation to ``minimal volume'' in topology); error in eqn (3.5) corrected; references added. To appear in Class. Quant. Grav
Subjects: General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc); High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
Journal reference: Class.Quant.Grav. 15 (1998) 2629-2638
Report number: UCD-97-21
Cite as: arXiv:gr-qc/9710114v2

Submission history

From: Steve Carlip [view email]
[v1] Mon, 27 Oct 1997 17:31:47 GMT (15kb)
[v2] Mon, 23 Mar 1998 19:43:38 GMT (16kb)