Diffeomorphism-Invariant Quantities in Phase Space: More than Correlations

Abstract

A popular view in the foundations of diffeomorphism-invariant theories is that their physical content is encoded in correlations or `observables': a set of phase space functions that have vanishing Poisson brackets with the constraints related to diffeomorphisms. In this article I study the phase space structure of models with a temporal diffeomorphism invariance and prove a series of formal results that challenge this view in a few ways. First, I show how this view is not applicable to all the phase space trajectories of every diffeomorphism-invariant theory. Second, I show how correlations can be proved to be invariant only in a way that generalizes the standard definition of invariance and in a way that does not provide smooth phase space functions. Third, I prove that spatiotemporal relations are also invariant. Fourth, I prove that spatiotemporal structures are indispensable for defining the invariant content of diffeomorphism-invariant models. Finally, I comment that these results are expected to be generalizable for models invariant under $d$-dimensional diffeomorphisms, which represents a challenge for some views in the foundations of general relativity and quantum gravity.

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