Scaled Triangleland Model of Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

In scaled relational particle mechanics, only relative times, relative angles and relative separations are meaningful. It arose in the study of the absolute versus relative motion debate. It has then turned out to be a useful toy model of classical and quantum general relativity, such as for investigating conceptual strategies for the problem of time. This paper studies the 3-particle 2-d scaled relational particle model, for which the configurations are scaled triangles. The configuration space for these is R^3 with a conformally flat metric thereupon (it is the cone over the corresponding shape space S^2. I use multiple harmonic oscillator type potentials and other potentials suggested by analogy with cosmology, and solve for some of these by using a partial analogy with the treatment of the atom in spherical and parabolic coordinates. Spherical coordinates are here the total moment of inertia $I$ for radius and two pure-shape coordinates. These are \Theta, a function of the ratio of the two relative separations of subsystems, and \Phi, the relative angle between the two subsystems. Parabolic coordinates are \Phi again and twice the partial moments of inertia of each subsystem. I interpret these solutions using 1) a `Bohr moment of inertia' for the model universe (playing the role of the scalefactor). 2) Expectations and spreads of sizes and shapes. 3) Superimposing the probability density function on the labelled tessellation of the configuration space that encodes meaningful subregions such as collinear configurations, equilateral triangles and isosceles triangles. Applications include hidden time, emergent semiclassical time, timeless and histories theory problem of time strategies, and comparing reduced and Dirac methods of quantization.