Cylinder transition amplitudes in pure AdS3 gravity

Abstract

A spacelike surface with cylinder topology can be described by various sets of canonical variables within pure AdS3 gravity. Each is made of one real coordinate and one real momentum. The Hamiltonian can be either H = 0 or it can be nonzero and we display the canonical transformations that map one into the other, in two relevant cases. In a choice of canonical coordinates, one of them is the cylinder aspect q, which evolves nontrivially in time. The time dependence of the aspect is an analytic function of time t and an “angular momentum” J. By analytic continuation in both t and J we obtain a Euclidean evolution that can be described geometrically as the motion of a cylinder inside the region of the 3D hyperbolic space bounded by two “domes” (i.e. half spheres), which is topologically a solid torus. We find that for a given J the Euclidean evolution cannot connect an initial aspect to an arbitrary final aspect; moreover, there are infinitely many Euclidean trajectories that connect any two allowed initial and final aspects. We compute the transition amplitude in two independent ways; first by solving exactly the time-dependent Schrödinger equation, then by summing in a sensible way all the saddle contributions, and we discuss why both approaches are mutually consistent.