Local Hamiltonian for spherically symmetric gravity coupled to a scalar field

Phys Rev Lett. 2012 Feb 3;108(5):051301. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.051301. Epub 2012 Jan 30.

Abstract

We present a gauge fixing of gravity coupled to a scalar field in spherical symmetry such that the Hamiltonian is an integral over space of a local density. Such a formulation had proved elusive over the years. As in any gauge fixing, it works for a restricted set of initial data. We argue that the set could be large enough to attempt a quantization the could include the important case of an evaporating black hole.