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Constraints are not enough

delete2025-10-03
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OA
AI
G
Gary T. Horowitz *
D
Donald Marolf
J
Jorge E. Santos
DOI:10.1007/JHEP10(2025)031delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
The Euclidean Einstein-Hilbert action is well-known to be unbounded below and thus to raise many questions regarding the definition of the gravitational path integral. A variety of works since the late 1980’s have suggested that this problem disappears when one fixes a foliation of the spacetime and imposes the corresponding gravitational constraints. However, we show here that this approach fails with various classes of boundary conditions imposed on the foliation: compact slices without boundary, asymptotically flat, or asymptotically locally anti-de Sitter slices. We also discuss the idea of fixing the scalar curvature and Wick-rotating the conformal factor, and show that it also fails to produce an action bounded from below.

Journal

Journal of High Energy Physics cover
Journal of High Energy Physics
IF:
5.5
Papers:
3.9W
Citations:
13.7W

Organization

D
Department of Physics
Scholars:
5.9K
Papers: 2.1K
Citations: 37
C
Centre for Mathematical Sciences
Scholars:
25
Papers: 21
Citations: 0