Elimination of cosmological singularities in quantum cosmology by suitable operator orderings

Abstract

Canonical quantization of general relativity does not yield a unique quantum theory for gravity. This is in part due to operator ordering ambiguities. In this paper, we investigate the role of different operator orderings on the question of whether a big bang or big crunch singularity occurs. We do this in the context of the minisuperspace model of a Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker universe with Brown-Kuchar dust. We find that for a certain class of operator orderings such a singularity is eliminated without having to impose boundary conditions.

9 pages, no figures, Latex; v2 minor improvements