QUANTUM STATE OF WORMHOLES AND TOPOLOGICAL ARROW OF TIME

Abstract

This paper studies the time-symmetry problem in quantum gravity. The issue depends critically on the choice of the quantum state and has been considered in this paper by restricting it to the case of quantum wormholes. It is seen that pure states represented by a wave functional are time symmetric. However, a maximal analytic extension of the wormhole manifold is found that corresponds to a mixed state describable by a nondegenerate density-matrix functional that involves an extra quantum uncertainty for the three-metric, and is free from the divergences encountered so far in statistical states formulated in quantum gravity. It is then argued that, relative to one asymptotic region, the statistical quantum state of single Euclidean wormholes in semiclassical approximation is time-asymmetric and gives rise to a topological arrow of time which will reflect in the set of all quantum fields at low energies of the asymptotically flat region.