Minisuperspace, WKB, Quantum States of General Relativistic Extended Objects

Abstract

The dynamics of relativistic thin shells is a recurrent topic in the literature about the classical theory of gravitating systems and the still ongoing attempts to obtain a coherent description of their quantum behavior. Certainly, a good reason to make this system a preferred one for many models is the clear, synthetic description given by Israel junction conditions. Using some results from an effective Lagrangian approach to the dynamics of spherically symmetric shells, we show a general way to obtain WKB states for the system; a simple example is also analyzed.