Mass Superselection, Canonical Gauge Transformations, and Asymptotically Flat Variational Principles

Abstract

The phase space reduction of Schwarzschild black holes by Thiemann and Kastrup and by Kuchař is reexamined from a different perspective on gauge freedom. This perspective introduces additional gauge transformations which correspond to asymptotically nontrivial diffeomorphisms. Various subtleties concerning variational principles for asymptotically flat systems are addressed which allow us to avoid the usual conclusion that treating such transformations as gauge implies the vanishing of corresponding total charges. Instead, superselection rules are found for the (nonvanishing) ADM mass at the asymptotic boundaries. The addition of phenomenological clocks at each asymptotic boundary is also studied and compared with the `parametrization clocks' of Kuchař.

15 pages, ReVTeX, Minor changes made in response to referee's commments

References in corpus (9)

• Geometrodynamics of Schwarzschild Black Holes
• Canonical Quantization of Spherically Symmetric Gravity in Ashtekar's Self-Dual Representation
• Spherically Symmetric Gravity as a Completely Integrable System
• Conservation Laws in the Quantum Mechanics of Closed Systems
• The Generalized Peierls Bracket
• Edge States in Canonical Gravity
• Poisson Bracket on the Space of Histories
• Classical and quantum representation theory
• Diffeomorphism Invariant Actions for Partial Systems

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Hamiltonian thermodynamics of the Reissner-Nordström-anti-de Sitter black hole
• The Rest-Frame Instant Form of Metric Gravity
• Hamiltonian spacetime dynamics with a spherical null-dust shell
• Reduced phase space formalism for spherically symmetric geometry with a massive dust shell
• Dirac's Observables for the Rest-Frame Instant Form of Tetrad Gravity in a Completely Fixed 3-Orthogonal Gauge
• Relativistic Quantum Mechanics and Relativistic Entanglement in the Rest-Frame Instant Form of Dynamics
• Quantum Decay of Domain Walls in Cosmology II: Hamiltonian Approach
• On Relativistic Entanglement and Localization of Particles and on their Comparison with the Non-Relativistic Theory
• Observables, gauge invariance, and the role of the observers in the limit from general relativity to special relativity