2010/09/18 by Julian Barbour, Barbour, Julian, Niall Ó Murchadha +1 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #Relativity and Gravitational Theory
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1009.3559
openalex publication_date 2010/09/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
It has long been considered that conformal superspace is the natural configuration space for canonical general relativity. However, this was never definitively demonstrated. We have found that the standard conformal method of solving the Einstein constraints has an unexpected extra symmetry. This allows us to complete the project. We show that given a point and a velocity in conformal superspace, the Einstein equations generate a unique curve in conformal superspace.