Quantcast
  • Register
PhysicsOverflow is a next-generation academic platform for physicists and astronomers, including a community peer review system and a postgraduate-level discussion forum analogous to MathOverflow.

Welcome to PhysicsOverflow! PhysicsOverflow is an open platform for community peer review and graduate-level Physics discussion.

Please help promote PhysicsOverflow ads elsewhere if you like it.

News

PO is now at the Physics Department of Bielefeld University!

New printer friendly PO pages!

Migration to Bielefeld University was successful!

Please vote for this year's PhysicsOverflow ads!

Please do help out in categorising submissions. Submit a paper to PhysicsOverflow!

... see more

Tools for paper authors

Submit paper
Claim Paper Authorship

Tools for SE users

Search User
Reclaim SE Account
Request Account Merger
Nativise imported posts
Claim post (deleted users)
Import SE post

Users whose questions have been imported from Physics Stack Exchange, Theoretical Physics Stack Exchange, or any other Stack Exchange site are kindly requested to reclaim their account and not to register as a new user.

Public \(\beta\) tools

Report a bug with a feature
Request a new functionality
404 page design
Send feedback

Attributions

(propose a free ad)

Site Statistics

205 submissions , 163 unreviewed
5,079 questions , 2,229 unanswered
5,348 answers , 22,758 comments
1,470 users with positive rep
819 active unimported users
More ...

  What are the "orbits" generated by a constraint?

+ 2 like - 0 dislike
107 views

I am currently reading the book "A First Course in Loop Quantum Gravity" by Gambini and Pullin. On page 55, they claim that the vanishing of the Poisson bracket between the smeared Gauss law, which is a constraint, and the Hamiltonian means that the "orbits" generated by this constraint leave the theory invariant. I am not sure what these "orbits" are or what the theory is invariant under. By my understanding, reading from other sources, their claim means that there is a curve $(E(\lambda),A(\lambda))$ in phase space given by

$$\frac{dE^a}{d\lambda}=\{G(\lambda),E^a\}$$

$$\frac{dA_a}{d\lambda}=\{G(\lambda),A_a(x)\}$$

such that anywhere along this curve the theory should have the same formulation and give the same physical predictions. This curve would be one of the "orbits" they talk about and there would be many orbits since the solutions to the differential equations above may not be unique.

Is my interpretation correct? And if not, what is the right interpretation?

asked Jun 10 in Theoretical Physics by anonymous [ no revision ]

Your answer

Please use answers only to (at least partly) answer questions. To comment, discuss, or ask for clarification, leave a comment instead.
To mask links under text, please type your text, highlight it, and click the "link" button. You can then enter your link URL.
Please consult the FAQ for as to how to format your post.
This is the answer box; if you want to write a comment instead, please use the 'add comment' button.
Live preview (may slow down editor)   Preview
Your name to display (optional):
Privacy: Your email address will only be used for sending these notifications.
Anti-spam verification:
If you are a human please identify the position of the character covered by the symbol $\varnothing$ in the following word:
p$\hbar$ysi$\varnothing$sOverflow
Then drag the red bullet below over the corresponding character of our banner. When you drop it there, the bullet changes to green (on slow internet connections after a few seconds).
Please complete the anti-spam verification




user contributions licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 with attribution required

Your rights
...