Quantizing dilatonic black holes - Towards nonperturbative canonical quantization of the CGHS model

Motivated by the search for a nonperturbative quantization, we cast the Callan-Giddings-Harvey-Strominger (CGHS) model of dilatonic black holes into a Hamiltonian framework. By making transformations to new 'embedding' variables, we map the model into that of a parametrized scalar field propagating on a fixed flat 1+1 background spacetime. The description in terms of the new variables is thus more amenable to quantization. Issues of asymptotics and boundary terms are dealt with systematically. This work has been done in collaboration with K. Kuchar (Univ of Utah) and J. Romano (Univ of Wisconsin-Milwaukee).