Geometrically induced magnetic catalysis and critical dimensions

We discuss the combined effect of magnetic fields and geometry in interacting fermionic systems. At leading order in the heat-kernel expansion, the infrared singularity (that in flat space leads to the magnetic catalysis) is regulated by the chiral gap effect, and the catalysis is deactivated by the effect of the scalar curvature. We discover that an infrared singularity is found in higher-order terms that mix the magnetic field with curvature, and these lead to a novel form of geometrically induced magnetic catalysis. The dynamical mass squared is then modified not only due to the chiral gap effect by an amount proportional to the curvature, but also by a magnetic shift $\propto (4-D)eB$, where $D$ represents the number of space-time dimensions. We argue that $D=4$ is a critical dimension across which the behavior of the magnetic shift changes qualitatively.Comment: 5 pages; minor change

Casimir energy for de Sitter branes in bulk AdS(5)

The vacuum energy for a massless conformally coupled scalar field in a brane world set up, corresponding to de Sitter branes in a bulk anti-de Sitter spacetime, is calculated. We use the Euclidean version of the metric which can be conformally related to a metric similar in form to the Einstein universe (S^4 times R). Employing zeta-function regularisation we evaluate the one-loop effective potential and show that the vacuum energy is zero for the one brane and non-zero for the two brane configuration. We comment on the back-reaction of this Casimir energy and on the inclusion of a mass term or non-conformal coupling.Comment: 6 pages, no figures, references added, typos corrected, to be published in Phys. Lett.

Zeta Functions in Brane World Cosmology

We present a calculation of the zeta function and of the functional determinant for a Laplace-type differential operator, corresponding to a scalar field in a higher dimensional de Sitter brane background, which consists of a higher dimensional anti-de Sitter bulk spacetime bounded by a de Sitter section, representing a brane. Contrary to the existing examples, which all make use of conformal transformations, we evaluate the zeta function working directly with the higher dimensional wave operator. We also consider a generic mass term and coupling to curvature, generalizing previous results. The massless, conformally coupled case is obtained as a limit of the general result and compared with known calculations. In the limit of large anti-de Sitter radius, the zeta determinant for the ball is recovered in perfect agreement with known expressions, providing an interesting check of our result and an alternative way of obtaining the ball determinant.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figur