Revisiting loop quantum gravity with selfdual variables: Hilbert space and first reality condition

Abstract: We consider the quantization of gravity as an SL(2,C) gauge theory in terms of Ashtekar's selfdual variables and reality conditions for the spatial metric (RCI) and its evolution (RCII). We start from a holomorphic phase space formulation. It is then natural to push for a quantization in terms of holomorphic wave functions. Thus we consider holomorphic cylindrical wave functions over SL(2,C) connections. We use an overall phase ambiguity of the complex selfdual action to obtain Poisson brackets that mirror those of the real theory. We then show that there is a representation of the corresponding canonical commutation relations the space of holomorphic cylindrical functions. We describe a class of cylindrically consistent measures that implements RCI. We show that spin networks with SU(2) intertwiners form a basis for gauge invariant states. They are still mutually orthogonal, but the normalisation is different than for the Ashtekar-Lewandowski measure for SU(2). We do not consider RCII in the present article. Work on RCII is ongoing and will be presented elsewhere.