Quantum cylindrical waves and parametrized field theory

Abstract

In this article, we review some illustrative results in the study of two related toy models for quantum gravity, namely cylindrical waves (which are cylindrically symmetric gravitational fields)and parametrized field theory (which is just free scalar field theory on a flat space–time in generally covariant disguise). In the former, we focus on the phenomenon of unexpected large quantum gravity effects in regions of weak classical gravitational fields and on an analysis of causality in a quantum geometry. In the latter, we focus on Dirac quantization, argue that this is related to the unitary implementability of free scalar field evolution along curved foliations of the flat space–time and review the relevant results for unitary implementability.