General relativity histories theory

General relativity histories theory II : Invariance groups

In this paper we show in detail how the histories description of general relativity carries representations of both the spacetime diffeomorphisms group and the Dirac algebra of constraints. We show that the introduction of metric-dependent equivariant foliations leads to the crucial result that the canonical constraints are invariant under the action of spacetime diffeomorphisms. Furthermore, t...

On the general relativity theory

In Appendix III of the fifth edition of his book Space, Time, Matter [15] henceforth cited as W (which has not been translated into English), Hermann Weyl derived for the first time, motivated by cosmological considerations, the general frequency shift formula for sources and observers moving arbitrarily in a general spacetime. In his discussion of cosmology (W, 39) he argued for a non-stationa...

Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity

Measurement Theory and General Relativity

The theory of measurement is employed to elucidate the physical basis of general relativity. For measurements involving phenomena with intrinsic length or time scales, such scales must in general be negligible compared to the (translational and rotational) scales characteristic of the motion of the observer. Thus general relativity is a consistent theory of coincidences so long as these involve...

General relativity histories theory: Spacetime diffeomorphisms and the Dirac algebra of constraints

We show that representations of the group of spacetime diffeomorphisms and the Dirac algebra both arise in a phase-space histories version of canonical general relativity. This is the general-relativistic analogue of the novel time structure introduced previously in history theory: namely, the existence in non-relativistic physics of two types of time translation; and the existence in relativis...