Uniqueness Criteria for the Fock Quantization of Dirac Fields and Applications in Hybrid Loop Quantum Cosmology

In generic curved spacetimes, the unavailability of a natural choice of vacuum state introduces a serious ambiguity in the Fock quantization of fields. In this review, we study the case of fermions described by a Dirac field in non-stationary spacetimes, and present recent results obtained by us and our collaborators about well-motivated criteria capable to ensure the uniqueness in the selection of a vacuum up to unitary transformations, at least in certain situations of interest in cosmology. These criteria are based on two reasonable requirements. First, the invariance of the vacuum under the symmetries of the Dirac equations in the considered spacetime. These symmetries include the spatial isometries. Second, the unitary implementability of the Heisenberg dynamics of the annihilation and creation operators when the curved spacetime is treated as a fixed background. This last requirement not only permits the uniqueness of the Fock quantization but, remarkably, it also allows us to determine an essentially unique splitting between the phase space variables assigned to the background and the fermionic annihilation and creation variables. We first consider Dirac fields in 2 + 1 dimensions and then discuss the more relevant case of 3 + 1 dimensions, particularizing the analysis to cosmological spacetimes with spatial sections of spherical or toroidal topology. We use this analysis to investigate the combined, hybrid quantization of the Dirac field and a flat homogeneous and isotropic background cosmology when the latter is treated as a quantum entity, and the former as a perturbation. Specifically, we focus our study on a background quantization along the lines of loop quantum cosmology. Among the Fock quantizations for the fermionic perturbations admissible according to our criteria, we discuss the possibility of further restricting the choice of a vacuum by the requisite of a finite fermionic backreaction and, moreover, by the diagonalization of the fermionic contribution to the total Hamiltonian in the asymptotic limit of large wave numbers of the Dirac modes. Finally, we argue in support of the uniqueness of the vacuum state selected by the extension of this diagonalization condition beyond the commented asymptotic region, in particular proving that it picks out the standard Poincaré and Bunch–Davies vacua for fixed flat and de Sitter background spacetimes, respectively.

Free Quantum Fields

The notion of free quantum field is thoroughly discussed in the linearised setting associated with the choice of a detector. The discussion requires attention to certain details that are often overlooked in the standard literature. Explicit expressions for generic fields, Dirac fields, gauge fields and ghost fields are laid down, as well the ensuing free-field expressions of important functionals. The relations between super-commutators of free fields and propagators, and the canonical super-commutation rules, follow from the above results.

Infinitesimal Deformations of ECD Fields

The standard notion of Lie derivative is extended in order to include Lie derivatives of spinors, soldering forms, spinor connections and spacetime connections. These extensions are all linked together, and provide a natural framework for discussing infinitesimal deformations of Einstein-Cartan-Dirac fields in the tetrad-affine setting.

Gauge Field Theory and Gravitation

The notion of 2-spinor soldering form allows a neat formulation, called the ‘tetrad-affine setting’, of a theory of matter and gauge fields interacting with the gravitational field. The latter is represented by a couple constituted by the soldering form and a 2-spinor connection. This approach is suited to describe matter fields with arbitrary spin and generic further internal structure. In particular one gets an approach to interacting Einstein-Cartan-Maxwell-Dirac fields, in which the only assumption is a complex bundle with 2-dimensional fibers: the needed bundles are obtained from it by natural geometric contructions, and any object which is not determined from these ‘minimal geometric data’ is assumed to be a dynamical field.

On Gauge Freedom and Interactions

The notion of gauge freedom is discussed in the context of the 2-spinor approach to Maxwell-Dirac fields. The various types of boson interaction terms arising in a generic gauge field theory are laid down, and detailed in the particular case of gauge boson interactions in the electroweak theory. Finally, several observations of ‘philosophical nature’ are offered, together with some ideas for future work.