Holomorphic quantum mechanics with a quadratic Hamiltonian constraint

Abstract

A finite dimensional system with a quadratic Hamiltonian constraint is Dirac quantized in holomorphic, antiholomorphic and mixed representations. A unique inner product is found by imposing Hermitian conjugacy relations on an operator algebra. The different representations yield drastically different Hilbert spaces. In particular, all the spaces obtained in the antiholomorphic representation violate classical expectations for the spectra of certain operators, whereas no such violation occurs in the holomorphic representation. A subset of these Hilbert spaces is also recovered in a configuration space representation. A propagation amplitude obtained from an (anti)holomorphic path integral is shown to give the matrix elements of the identity operators in the relevant Hilbert spaces with respect to an overcomplete basis of representation-dependent generalized coherent states. Relation to quantization of spatially homogeneous cosmologies is discussed in view of the no-boundary proposal of Hartle and Hawking and the new variables of Ashtekar.