Comments on quantum aspects of three-dimensional de Sitter gravity

Abstract

We investigate the quantum aspects of three-dimensional gravity with a positive cosmological constant. The reduced phase space of the three-dimensional de Sitter gravity is obtained as the space which consists of the Kerr–de Sitter spacetimes and their Virasoro deformations. A quantization of the phase space is carried out by the geometric quantization of the coadjoint orbits of the asymptotic Virasoro symmetries. The Virasoro algebras with real central charges are obtained as the quantum asymptotic symmetries. The states of globally de Sitter and point particle solutions become the primary states of the unitary irreducible representations of the Virasoro algebras. It is shown that those states are perturbatively stable at the quantum level. The Virasoro deformations of these solutions correspond to the excited states in the unitary irreducible representations. In view of the dS/CFT correspondence, we also study the relationship between the Liouville field theory obtained by a reduction of the SL(2; C) Chern–Simons theory and the three-dimensional gravity both classically and quantum mechanically. In the analyses of the both theories, the Kerr–de Sitter geometries with non-zero angular momenta do not give the unitary representations of the Virasoro algebras.