Towards canonical quantum gravity for 3+1 geometries admitting maximally symmetric two-dimensional surfaces

The canonical decomposition of all 3+1 geometries admitting two-dimensional space-like surfaces is exhibited as a generalization of a previous work. A proposal, consisting of a specific renormalization Assumption and an accompanying Requirement, which has been put forward in the 2+1 case is now generalized to 3+1 dimensions. This enables the canonical quantization of these geometries through a generalization of Kuchař's quantization scheme in the case of infinite degrees of freedom. The resulting Wheeler–DeWitt equation is based on a renormalized manifold parameterized by three smooth scalar functionals. The entire space of solutions to this equation is analytically given, a fact that is entirely new to the present case. This is made possible through the exploitation of the residual freedom in the choice of the third functional, which is left by the imposition of the Requirement, and is proven to correspond to a general coordinate transformation in the renormalized manifold.