Scattering of massive Dirac fields on the Schwarzschild black hole spacetime

With a generally covariant equation of Dirac fields outside a black hole, we develop a scattering theory for massive Dirac fields. The existence of modified wave operators at infinity is shown by implementing a time-dependent logarithmic phase shift from the free dynamics to offset a long-range mass term. The phase shift we obtain is a matrix operator due to the existence of both positive and negative energy wave components.Comment: LaTex, 17 page

The microlocal spectrum condition and Wick polynomials of free fields on curved spacetimes

Quantum fields propagating on a curved spacetime are investigated in terms of microlocal analysis. We discuss a condition on the wave front set for the corresponding n-point distributions, called ``microlocal spectrum condition'' ($\mu$SC). On Minkowski space, this condition is satisfied as a consequence of the usual spectrum condition. Based on Radzikowski's determination of the wave front set of the two-point function of a free scalar field, satisfying the Hadamard condition in the Kay and Wald sense, we construct in the second part of this paper all Wick polynomials including the energy-momentum tensor for this field as operator valued distributions on the manifold and prove that they satisfy our microlocal spectrum condition.Comment: 21 pages, AMS-LaTeX, 2 figures appended as Postscript file

Time-Translation Invariance of Scattering Maps and Blue-Shift Instabilities on Kerr Black Hole Spacetimes

In this paper, we provide an elementary, unified treatment of two distinct blue-shift instabilities for the scalar wave equation on a fixed Kerr black hole background: the celebrated blue-shift at the Cauchy horizon (familiar from the strong cosmic censorship conjecture) and the time-reversed red-shift at the event horizon (relevant in classical scattering theory). Our first theorem concerns the latter and constructs solutions to the wave equation on Kerr spacetimes such that the radiation field along the future event horizon vanishes and the radiation field along future null infinity decays at an arbitrarily fast polynomial rate, yet, the local energy of the solution is infinite near any point on the future event horizon. Our second theorem constructs solutions to the wave equation on rotating Kerr spacetimes such that the radiation field along the past event horizon (extended into the black hole) vanishes and the radiation field along past null infinity decays at an arbitrarily fast polynomial rate, yet, the local energy of the solution is infinite near any point on the Cauchy horizon. The results make essential use of the scattering theory developed in [M. Dafermos, I. Rodnianski and Y. Shlapentokh-Rothman, A scattering theory for the wave equation on Kerr black hole exteriors, preprint (2014) available at \url{http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.8379}] and exploit directly the time-translation invariance of the scattering map and the non-triviality of the transmission map.Comment: 26 pages, 12 figure

Local covariant quantum field theory over spectral geometries

A framework which combines ideas from Connes' noncommutative geometry, or spectral geometry, with recent ideas on generally covariant quantum field theory, is proposed in the present work. A certain type of spectral geometries modelling (possibly noncommutative) globally hyperbolic spacetimes is introduced in terms of so-called globally hyperbolic spectral triples. The concept is further generalized to a category of globally hyperbolic spectral geometries whose morphisms describe the generalization of isometric embeddings. Then a local generally covariant quantum field theory is introduced as a covariant functor between such a category of globally hyperbolic spectral geometries and the category of involutive algebras (or *-algebras). Thus, a local covariant quantum field theory over spectral geometries assigns quantum fields not just to a single noncommutative geometry (or noncommutative spacetime), but simultaneously to ``all'' spectral geometries, while respecting the covariance principle demanding that quantum field theories over isomorphic spectral geometries should also be isomorphic. It is suggested that in a quantum theory of gravity a particular class of globally hyperbolic spectral geometries is selected through a dynamical coupling of geometry and matter compatible with the covariance principle.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figure

Algebraic approach to quantum field theory on non-globally-hyperbolic spacetimes

The mathematical formalism for linear quantum field theory on curved spacetime depends in an essential way on the assumption of global hyperbolicity. Physically, what lie at the foundation of any formalism for quantization in curved spacetime are the canonical commutation relations, imposed on the field operators evaluated at a global Cauchy surface. In the algebraic formulation of linear quantum field theory, the canonical commutation relations are restated in terms of a well-defined symplectic structure on the space of smooth solutions, and the local field algebra is constructed as the Weyl algebra associated to this symplectic vector space. When spacetime is not globally hyperbolic, e.g. when it contains naked singularities or closed timelike curves, a global Cauchy surface does not exist, and there is no obvious way to formulate the canonical commutation relations, hence no obvious way to construct the field algebra. In a paper submitted elsewhere, we report on a generalization of the algebraic framework for quantum field theory to arbitrary topological spaces which do not necessarily have a spacetime metric defined on them at the outset. Taking this generalization as a starting point, in this paper we give a prescription for constructing the field algebra of a (massless or massive) Klein-Gordon field on an arbitrary background spacetime. When spacetime is globally hyperbolic, the theory defined by our construction coincides with the ordinary Klein-Gordon field theory on aComment: 21 pages, UCSBTH-92-4

Relativistic Lee Model on Riemannian Manifolds

We study the relativistic Lee model on static Riemannian manifolds. The model is constructed nonperturbatively through its resolvent, which is based on the so-called principal operator and the heat kernel techniques. It is shown that making the principal operator well-defined dictates how to renormalize the parameters of the model. The renormalization of the parameters are the same in the light front coordinates as in the instant form. Moreover, the renormalization of the model on Riemannian manifolds agrees with the flat case. The asymptotic behavior of the renormalized principal operator in the large number of bosons limit implies that the ground state energy is positive. In 2+1 dimensions, the model requires only a mass renormalization. We obtain rigorous bounds on the ground state energy for the n-particle sector of 2+1 dimensional model.Comment: 23 pages, added a new section, corrected typos and slightly different titl

Scale Invariance in disordered systems: the example of the Random Field Ising Model

We show by numerical simulations that the correlation function of the random field Ising model (RFIM) in the critical region in three dimensions has very strong fluctuations and that in a finite volume the correlation length is not self-averaging. This is due to the formation of a bound state in the underlying field theory. We argue that this non perturbative phenomenon is not particular to the RFIM in 3-d. It is generic for disordered systems in two dimensions and may also happen in other three dimensional disordered systems

Quantization of Dirac fields in static spacetime

On a static spacetime, the solutions of the Dirac equation are generated by a time-independent Hamiltonian. We study this Hamiltonian and characterize the split into positive and negative energy. We use it to find explicit expressions for advanced and retarded fundamental solutions and for the propagator. Finally, we use a fermion Fock space based on the positive/negative energy split to define a Dirac quantum field operator whose commutator is the propagator.Comment: LaTex2e, 17 page

Distributional Modes for Scalar Field Quantization

We propose a mode-sum formalism for the quantization of the scalar field based on distributional modes, which are naturally associated with a slight modification of the standard plane-wave modes. We show that this formalism leads to the standard Rindler temperature result, and that these modes can be canonically defined on any Cauchy surface.Comment: 15 pages, RevTe

Recovering the mass and the charge of a Reissner-Nordstr\"om black hole by an inverse scattering experiment

In this paper, we study inverse scattering of massless Dirac fields that propagate in the exterior region of a Reissner-Nordstr\"om black hole. Using a stationary approach we determine precisely the leading terms of the high-energy asymptotic expansion of the scattering matrix that, in turn, permit us to recover uniquely the mass of the black hole and its charge up to a sign