Effective actions on the squashed three-sphere

The effective actions of a scalar and massless spin-half field are determined as functions of the deformation of a symmetrically squashed three-sphere. The extreme oblate case is particularly examined as pertinant to a high temperature statistical mechanical interpretation that may be relevant for the holographic principle. Interpreting the squashing parameter as a temperature, we find that the effective `free energies' on the three-sphere are mixtures of thermal two-sphere scalars and spinors which, in the case of the spinor on the three-sphere, have the `wrong' thermal periodicities. However the free energies do have the same leading high temperature forms as the standard free energies on the two-sphere. The next few terms in the high-temperature expansion are also explicitly calculated and briefly compared with the Taub-Bolt-AdS bulk result.Comment: 23 pages, JyTeX. Conclusion slightly amended, one equation and minor misprints correcte

The renormalization group and spontaneous compactification of a higher-dimensional scalar field theory in curved spacetime

The renormalization group (RG) is used to study the asymptotically free $\phi_6^3$-theory in curved spacetime. Several forms of the RG equations for the effective potential are formulated. By solving these equations we obtain the one-loop effective potential as well as its explicit forms in the case of strong gravitational fields and strong scalar fields. Using zeta function techniques, the one-loop and corresponding RG improved vacuum energies are found for the Kaluza-Klein backgrounds $R^4\times S^1\times S^1$ and $R^4\times S^2$. They are given in terms of exponentially convergent series, appropriate for numerical calculations. A study of these vacuum energies as a function of compactification lengths and other couplings shows that spontaneous compactification can be qualitatively different when the RG improved energy is used.Comment: LaTeX, 15 pages, 4 figure

Spectral analysis and zeta determinant on the deformed spheres

We consider a class of singular Riemannian manifolds, the deformed spheres $S^N_k$, defined as the classical spheres with a one parameter family $g[k]$ of singular Riemannian structures, that reduces for $k=1$ to the classical metric. After giving explicit formulas for the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the metric Laplacian $\Delta_{S^N_k}$, we study the associated zeta functions $\zeta(s,\Delta_{S^N_k})$. We introduce a general method to deal with some classes of simple and double abstract zeta functions, generalizing the ones appearing in $\zeta(s,\Delta_{S^N_k})$. An application of this method allows to obtain the main zeta invariants for these zeta functions in all dimensions, and in particular $\zeta(0,\Delta_{S^N_k})$ and $\zeta'(0,\Delta_{S^N_k})$. We give explicit formulas for the zeta regularized determinant in the low dimensional cases, $N=2,3$, thus generalizing a result of Dowker \cite{Dow1}, and we compute the first coefficients in the expansion of these determinants in powers of the deformation parameter $k$.Comment: 1 figur

A Conformally Invariant Holographic Two-Point Function on the Berger Sphere

We apply our previous work on Green's functions for the four-dimensional quaternionic Taub-NUT manifold to obtain a scalar two-point function on the homogeneously squashed three-sphere (otherwise known as the Berger sphere), which lies at its conformal infinity. Using basic notions from conformal geometry and the theory of boundary value problems, in particular the Dirichlet-to-Robin operator, we establish that our two-point correlation function is conformally invariant and corresponds to a boundary operator of conformal dimension one. It is plausible that the methods we use could have more general applications in an AdS/CFT context.Comment: 1+49 pages, no figures. v2: Several typos correcte