Instanton representation of Plebanski gravity XX. Minisuperspace quantization of gravity coupled to the Klein--Gordon scalar field

Abstract

In this paper we quantize the Klein--Gordon scalar field coupled to gravity in the instanton representation for spatially homogeneous variables. The construction provides a well-defined Hilbert space of states for generic self-interaction potential V, with a direct link to the semiclassical limit below the Planck scale. Additionally, we compute the Hamilton's equations of motion for this model, performing various consistency checks on the quantum theory.