CANONICAL QUANTIZATION OF GENERAL RELATIVITY WITH APPLICATION TO THE SCHWARZSCHILD BLACK HOLE
Hamiltonian formalism, canonical quantization, general relativity, Schwarzschild black hole.
This dissertation aims to discuss the canonical quantization of general relativity and
apply it to the Schwarzschild black hole, and thus it can be divided into two main parts.
To implement this quantization process, it is essential to obtain a Hamiltonian for the
gravitational field, and a variational formulation of general relativity becomes necessary.
With the Hamiltonian in hand, we can define the mass of spacetime and, with it, the
gravitational ADM action. The system constraints are obtained by using the Dirac–
Bergmann algorithm, and the quantization then proceeds in the usual way, changing
the nature of the canonical variables by promoting them to operators. In the quantum
theory, such constraints become conditions on the state vector of the system, whose wave
function satisfies the Wheeler–DeWitt equation. In the case of the Schwarzschild black
hole, we only have the degree of freedom given by its mass. Therefore, we are dealing
with an effectively one-dimensional system whose wave function is a linear combination of
confluent hypergeometric functions and whose mass spectrum derives from the appropriate
boundary condition. In this scenario, the transition between states is responsible for the
emission of Hawking radiation, and the temperature of the black hole is obtained through
the Stefan–Boltzmann law.