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Phys. Rev. D 56, 3329–3340 (1997)

Topology change in canonical quantum cosmology

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Vitorio A. De Lorenci1, Jéro⁁me Martin1,2, Nelson Pinto-Neto1, and Ivano Damião Soares1
1Laboratório de Cosmologia e Física Experimental de Altas Energias, Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas, Rua Dr. Xavier Sigaud 150, Urca, Rio de Janeiro CEP 22290-180-RJ, Brazil
2Laboratoire de Gravitation et Cosmologies Relativistes, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, CNRS/URA 769, Tour 22/12, Boite courrier 142, 4 place Jussieu, 75252 Paris, France

Received 8 January 1997; published in the issue dated 15 September 1997

We develop the canonical quantization of a midisuperspace model which contains, as a subspace, a minisuperspace constituted of a Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker universe filled with homogeneous scalar and dust fields, where the sign of the intrinsic curvature of the spacelike hypersurfaces of homogeneity is not specified, allowing the study of topology change in these hypersurfaces. We solve the Wheeler-DeWitt equation of the midisuperspace model restricted to this minisuperspace subspace in the semiclassical approximation. Adopting the conditional probability interpretation, we find that some of the solutions present change of topology of the homogeneous hypersurfaces. However, this result depends crucially on the interpretation we adopt: using the usual probabilistic interpretation, we find selection rules which forbid some of these topology changes.

© 1997 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.56.3329
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevD.56.3329
PACS:
98.80.Hw, 04.60.Kz