Conformal structure of FLRW Cosmology: Spinorial representation and the so(3,2) algebra of observables

Abstract

It was recently shown that the homogeneous and isotropic cosmology of a massless scalar field coupled to general relativity exhibits a new hidden conformal invariance under Mobius transformation of the proper time, additionally to the invariance under time-reparamterization. The resulting Noether charges form a $sl(2,\mathbb{R})$ Lie algebra, which encapsulates the whole kinematics and dynamics of the geometry. This allows to map FLRW cosmology onto conformal mechanics and formulate quantum cosmology in ${\text{CFT}}_1$ terms. Here, we show that this conformal structure is embedded in a larger $so(3,2)$ algebra of observables, which allows to present all the Dirac observables for the whole gravity plus matter sectors in a unified picture. Not only this allows one to quantize the system and its whole algebra of observables as a single irreducible representation of $so(3,2)$, but this also gives access to a scalar field operator $\hat{\varphi }$ opening the door to the inclusion of non-trivial potentials for the scalar field. As such, this extended conformal structure might allow to perform a group quantization of inflationary cosmological backgrounds.

30 pages, minor revision in JHEP published version plus acknowledgments

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• The Cosmological Spinor