Vanishing canonical Hamiltonian of a closed universe

ID: vanishing-canonical-hamiltonian-of-a-closed-universe

On a compact spatial Cauchy hypersurface without boundary, the gravitational Hamiltonian consists entirely of constraints and vanishes on solutions. There is no asymptotic time-translation boundary charge to add. This is the canonical statement that a closed universe has zero total energy; it does not assert that local matter energy density or local curvature vanishes.

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