A Harmonic Space Approach to Spherically Symmetric Quantum Gravity

Abstract

After dimensional reduction the stationary spherically symmetric sector of Einstein's gravity is identified with an SL(2,R)/SO(2) Sigma model coupled to a one dimensional gravitational remnant. The space of classical solutions consists of a one parameter family interpolating between the Schwarzschild and the Taub-NUT solution. A Dirac Quantization of this system is performed and the observables -- the Schwarzschild mass and the Taub-NUT charge operator -- are shown to be self-adjoint operators with a continuous spectrum ranging from $-\infty$ to $\infty$. The Hilbert space is constructed explicitely using a harmonic space approach.