General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, abstract
gr-qc/0602086

From: Parampreet Singh [view email]

Date (v1): Wed, 22 Feb 2006 20:22:34 GMT (552kb)
Date (revised v2): Thu, 6 Apr 2006 19:13:15 GMT (552kb)

Quantum Nature of the Big Bang

Authors: Abhay Ashtekar, Tomasz Pawlowski, Parampreet Singh

Comments: Revtex4, 4 Pages, 2 Figures. Minor changes to match the published version in Physical Review Letters

Report-no: IGPG 06/2-1

Some long standing issues concerning the quantum nature of the big bang are resolved in the context of homogeneous isotropic models with a scalar field. Specifically, the known results on the resolution of the big bang singularity in loop quantum cosmology are significantly extended as follows: i) the scalar field is shown to serve as an internal clock, thereby providing a detailed realization of the `emergent time' idea; ii) the physical Hilbert space, Dirac observables and semi-classical states are constructed rigorously; iii) the Hamiltonian constraint is solved numerically to show that the big bang is replaced by a big bounce. Thanks to the non-perturbative, background independent methods, unlike in other approaches the quantum evolution is deterministic across the deep Planck regime.

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/0602086