Dirac’s discrete hypersurface deformation algebras

Abstract

The diffeomorphism symmetry of general relativity leads in the canonical formulation to constraints, which encode the dynamics of the theory. These constraints satisfy a complicated algebra, known as Dirac’s hypersurface deformation algebra. This algebra has been a long standing challenge for quantization. One reason is that discretizations, on which many quantum gravity approaches rely, generically break diffeomorphism symmetry. In this work we find a representation for the Dirac constraint algebra of hypersurface deformations in a formulation of discrete 3D gravity and for the flat as well as homogeneously curved sector of discrete 4D gravity. In these cases diffeomorphism symmetry can be preserved. Furthermore we present different versions of the hypersurface deformation algebra for the boundary of a simplex in arbitrary dimensions.