QUANTUM OBSERVABLES AND RECOLLAPSING DYNAMICS

Within a simple quantization scheme, observables for a large class of finite-dimensional time reparametrization invariant systems may be constructed by integration over the manifold of time labels. This procedure is shown to produce a complete set of densely defined operators on a physical Hilbert space, for which an inner product is identified, and to provide reasonable results for simple test cases. Furthermore, many of these observables have a clear interpretation in the classical limit and we use this to demonstrate that, for a class of minisuperspace models including LRS Bianchi IX and the Kantowski-Sachs model, this quantization agrees with classical physics in predicting that such spacetimes recollapse.