Schrödinger from Wheeler–DeWitt: The issues of time and inner product in canonical quantum gravity

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 Schrödinger 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 Schrödinger 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 Schrödinger 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.