4,041 research outputs found
Quantum Effective Action in Spacetimes with Branes and Boundaries: Diffeomorphism Invariance
We construct a gauge-fixing procedure in the path integral for gravitational
models with branes and boundaries. This procedure incorporates a set of gauge
conditions which gauge away effectively decoupled diffeomorphisms acting in the
-dimensional bulk and on the -dimensional brane. The corresponding
gauge-fixing factor in the path integral factorizes as a product of the bulk
and brane (surface-theory) factors. This factorization underlies a special bulk
wavefunction representation of the brane effective action. We develop the
semiclassical expansion for this action and explicitly derive it in the
one-loop approximation. The one-loop brane effective action can be decomposed
into the sum of the gauge-fixed bulk contribution and the contribution of the
pseudodifferential operator of the brane-to-brane propagation of quantum
gravitational perturbations. The gauge dependence of these contributions is
analyzed by the method of Ward identities. By the recently suggested method of
the Neumann-Dirichlet reduction the bulk propagator in the semiclassical
expansion is converted to the Dirichlet boundary conditions preferable from the
calculational viewpoint.Comment: 37 pages, LaTe
From Peierls brackets to a generalized Moyal bracket for type-I gauge theories
In the space-of-histories approach to gauge fields and their quantization,
the Maxwell, Yang--Mills and gravitational field are well known to share the
property of being type-I theories, i.e. Lie brackets of the vector fields which
leave the action functional invariant are linear combinations of such vector
fields, with coefficients of linear combination given by structure constants.
The corresponding gauge-field operator in the functional integral for the
in-out amplitude is an invertible second-order differential operator. For such
an operator, we consider advanced and retarded Green functions giving rise to a
Peierls bracket among group-invariant functionals. Our Peierls bracket is a
Poisson bracket on the space of all group-invariant functionals in two cases
only: either the gauge-fixing is arbitrary but the gauge fields lie on the
dynamical sub-space; or the gauge-fixing is a linear functional of gauge
fields, which are generic points of the space of histories. In both cases, the
resulting Peierls bracket is proved to be gauge-invariant by exploiting the
manifestly covariant formalism. Moreover, on quantization, a gauge-invariant
Moyal bracket is defined that reduces to i hbar times the Peierls bracket to
lowest order in hbar.Comment: 14 pages, Late
Non-Perturbative One-Loop Effective Action for Electrodynamics in Curved Spacetime
In this paper we explicitly evaluate the one-loop effective action in four
dimensions for scalar and spinor fields under the influence of a strong,
covariantly constant, magnetic field in curved spacetime. In the framework of
zeta function regularization, we find the one-loop effective action to all
orders in the magnetic field up to linear terms in the Riemannian curvature. As
a particular case, we also obtain the one-loop effective action for massless
scalar and spinor fields. In this setting, we found that the vacuum energy of
charged spinors with small mass becomes very large due entirely by the
gravitational correction.Comment: LaTeX, 23 page
Self-force on a scalar charge in radial infall from rest using the Hadamard-WKB expansion
We present an analytic method based on the Hadamard-WKB expansion to
calculate the self-force for a particle with scalar charge that undergoes
radial infall in a Schwarzschild spacetime after being held at rest until a
time t = 0. Our result is valid in the case of short duration from the start.
It is possible to use the Hadamard-WKB expansion in this case because the value
of the integral of the retarded Green's function over the particle's entire
past trajectory can be expressed in terms of two integrals over the time period
that the particle has been falling. This analytic result is expected to be
useful as a check for numerical prescriptions including those involving mode
sum regularization and for any other analytical approximations to self-force
calculations.Comment: 22 pages, 2 figures, Physical Review D version along with the
corrections given in the erratu
An introduction to quantum gravity
After an overview of the physical motivations for studying quantum gravity,
we reprint THE FORMAL STRUCTURE OF QUANTUM GRAVITY, i.e. the 1978 Cargese
Lectures by Professor B.S. DeWitt, with kind permission of Springer. The reader
is therefore introduced, in a pedagogical way, to the functional integral
quantization of gravitation and Yang-Mills theory. It is hoped that such a
paper will remain useful for all lecturers or Ph.D. students who face the task
of introducing (resp. learning) some basic concepts in quantum gravity in a
relatively short time. In the second part, we outline selected topics such as
the braneworld picture with the same covariant formalism of the first part, and
spectral asymptotics of Euclidean quantum gravity with diffeomorphism-invariant
boundary conditions. The latter might have implications for singularity
avoidance in quantum cosmology.Comment: 68 pages, Latex file. Sections from 2 to 17 are published thanks to
kind permission of Springe
Path-Integral Formulation of Pseudo-Hermitian Quantum Mechanics and the Role of the Metric Operator
We provide a careful analysis of the generating functional in the path
integral formulation of pseudo-Hermitian and in particular PT-symmetric quantum
mechanics and show how the metric operator enters the expression for the
generating functional.Comment: Published version, 4 page
van Vleck determinants: geodesic focussing and defocussing in Lorentzian spacetimes
The van Vleck determinant is an ubiquitous object, arising in many physically
interesting situations such as: (1) WKB approximations to quantum time
evolution operators and Green functions. (2) Adiabatic approximations to heat
kernels. (3) One loop approximations to functional integrals. (4) The theory of
caustics in geometrical optics and ultrasonics. (5) The focussing and
defocussing of geodesic flows in Riemannian manifolds. While all of these
topics are interrelated, the present paper is particularly concerned with the
last case and presents extensive theoretical developments that aid in the
computation of the van Vleck determinant associated with geodesic flows in
Lorentzian spacetimes. {\sl A fortiori} these developments have important
implications for the entire array of topics indicated. PACS: 04.20.-q,
04.20.Cv, 04.60.+n. To appear in Physical Review D47 (1993) 15 March.Comment: plain LaTeX, 18 page
On the Quantum Corrections to the Newtonian Potential
The leading long-distance quantum correction to the Newtonian potential for
heavy spinless particles is computed in quantum gravity. The potential is
obtained directly from the sum of all graviton exchange diagrams contributing
to lowest non-trivial order to the scattering amplitude. The calculation
correctly reproduces the leading classical relativistic post-Newtonian
correction. The sign of the perturbative quantum correction would indicate
that, in the absence of a cosmological constant, quantum effects lead to a slow
increase of the gravitational coupling with distance.Comment: revised version, references added, 12 pages, postscript, 2 figure
Quantum Effective Action in Spacetimes with Branes and Boundaries
We construct quantum effective action in spacetime with branes/boundaries.
This construction is based on the reduction of the underlying Neumann type
boundary value problem for the propagator of the theory to that of the much
more manageable Dirichlet problem. In its turn, this reduction follows from the
recently suggested Neumann-Dirichlet duality which we extend beyond the tree
level approximation. In the one-loop approximation this duality suggests that
the functional determinant of the differential operator subject to Neumann
boundary conditions in the bulk factorizes into the product of its Dirichlet
counterpart and the functional determinant of a special operator on the brane
-- the inverse of the brane-to-brane propagator. As a byproduct of this
relation we suggest a new method for surface terms of the heat kernel
expansion. This method allows one to circumvent well-known difficulties in heat
kernel theory on manifolds with boundaries for a wide class of generalized
Neumann boundary conditions. In particular, we easily recover several lowest
order surface terms in the case of Robin and oblique boundary conditions. We
briefly discuss multi-loop applications of the suggested Dirichlet reduction
and the prospects of constructing the universal background field method for
systems with branes/boundaries, analogous to the Schwinger-DeWitt technique.Comment: LaTeX, 25 pages, final version, to appear in Phys. Rev.
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