Complexifier coherent states for quantum general relativity

Abstract

Recently, substantial amount of activity in quantum general relativity (QGR) has focused on the semiclassical analysis of the theory. In this paper, we want to comment on two such developments: (1) polymer-like states for Maxwell theory and linearized gravity constructed by Varadarajan which use much of the Hilbert space machinery that has proved useful in QGR, and (2) coherent states for QGR, based on the general complexifier method, with built-in semiclassical properties. We show the following. (A) Varadarajan's states are complexifier coherent states. This unifies all states constructed so far under the general complexifier principle. (B) Ashtekar and Lewandowski suggested a non-Abelian generalization of Varadarajan's states to QGR which, however, are no longer of the complexifier type. We construct a new class of non-Abelian complexifiers which come close to that underlying Varadarajan's construction. (C) Non-Abelian complexifiers close to Varadarajan's induce new types of Hilbert spaces which do not support the operator algebra of QGR. The analysis suggests that if one sticks to the present kinematical framework of QGR and if kinematical coherent states are at all useful, then normalizable, graph-dependent states must be used which are produced by the complexifier method as well. (D) Present proposals for states with mildened graph dependence, obtained by performing a graph average, do not approximate well coordinate-dependent observables. However, graph-dependent states, whether averaged or not, seem to be well suited for the semiclassical analysis of QGR with respect to coordinate-independent operators.