The physical Hamiltonian in nonperturbative quantum gravity

Abstract

A quantum Hamiltonian which evolves the gravitational field according to time as measured by constant surfaces of a scalar field is defined through a regularization procedure based on the loop representation, and is shown to be finite and diffeomorphism invariant. The problem of constructing this Hamiltonian is reduced to a combinatorial and algebraic problem which involves the rearrangements of lines through the vertices of arbitrary graphs. This procedure also provides a construction of the Hamiltonian constraint as a finite operator on the space of diffeomorphism invariant states as well as a construction of the operator corresponding to the spatial volume of the Universe.