Quantization of the Graviton Field, Characterization of the Physical Subspace and Unitarity in Causal Quantum Gravity

In this paper we lay the foundations of causal quantum gravity, i.e. of a quantum theory of self-interacting symmetric massless rank-2 tensor gauge fields, the gravitons, on flat space-time, in the framework of causal perturbation theory. The causal inductive construction of the S-matrix for quantum gravity leads to a very satisfactory treatment of the ultraviolet problem. Here we concentrate on some main fundamental issues that concern the quantization of the gravitational interactions: the quantization of the free graviton field, the rôle of the fermionic ghost vector fields in preserving perturbative gauge invariance, the construction of the Fock space for the graviton and the consequent characterization of the subspace for the physical graviton states. This last point is necessary, together with perturbative gauge invariance, in order to prove unitarity of the S-matrix restricted to the physical subspace. PACS numbers: 0460, 1110