The Cosmological Spinor

Abstract

We build upon previous investigation of the one-dimensional conformal symmetry of the Friedman-Lema\^ itre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) cosmology of a free scalar field and make it explicit through a reformulation of the theory at the classical level in terms of a manifestly $\textrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{R})$-invariant action principle. The new tool is a canonical transformation of the cosmological phase space to write it in terms of a spinor, i.e. a pair of complex variables that transform under the fundamental representation of $\textrm{SU}(1,1)\sim\textrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{R})$. The resulting FLRW Hamiltonian constraint is simply quadratic in the spinor and FLRW cosmology is written as a Schr\"odinger-like action principle. Conformal transformations can then be written as proper-time dependent $\textrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{R})$ transformations. We conclude with possible generalizations of FLRW to arbitrary quadratic Hamiltonian and discuss the interpretation of the spinor as a gravitationally-dressed matter field or matter-dressed geometry observable.