The Hadamard Condition for Dirac Fields and Adiabatic States on Robertson-Walker Spacetimes

We characterise the homogeneous and isotropic gauge invariant and quasifree states for free Dirac quantum fields on Robertson-Walker spacetimes in any even dimension. Using this characterisation, we construct adiabatic vacuum states of order $n$ corresponding to some Cauchy surface. We then show that any two such states (of sufficiently high order) are locally quasi-equivalent. We propose a microlocal version of the Hadamard condition for spinor fields on arbitrary spacetimes, which is shown to entail the usual short distance behaviour of the twopoint function. The polarisation set of these twopoint functions is determined from the Dencker connection of the spinorial Klein-Gordon operator which we show to equal the (pull-back) of the spin connection. Finally it is demonstrated that adiabatic states of infinite order are Hadamard, and that those of order $n$ correspond, in some sense, to a truncated Hadamard series and will therefore allow for a point splitting renormalisation of the expected stress-energy tensor.Comment: 29 pages, Latex, no figures. v2: corrections in the proof of Thm. IV.1. v3: published versio

News vs Information

We consider the relative entropy between the vacuum state and a coherent state in linearized quantum gravity around a stationary black hole spacetime. Combining recent results by Casini et al. and Longo with the Raychaudhuri equation, the following result is obtained: Let $\frak A$ be the algebra of observables assoiciated with a region that is the causal future of some compact set in the interior of the spacetime. Let $S$ be the relative entropy with respect to this algebra, $A$ the area of the horizon cross section defined by the region, computed to second order in the gravitational perturbation. If the region is time-translated by the Killing parameter $t$, then $\frac{d}{d t}(S+A/4)= 2\pi F$, with $F$ the flux of the gravitational/matter radiation (integrated squared news tensor) emitted towards the future of the region.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1903.07508, v2: some details added on function spaces and decay of solutions, refs. adde

Quantum field theory in curved spacetime, the operator product expansion, and dark energy

To make sense of quantum field theory in an arbitrary (globally hyperbolic) curved spacetime, the theory must be formulated in a local and covariant manner in terms of locally measureable field observables. Since a generic curved spacetime does not possess symmetries or a unique notion of a vacuum state, the theory also must be formulated in a manner that does not require symmetries or a preferred notion of a ``vacuum state'' and ``particles''. We propose such a formulation of quantum field theory, wherein the operator product expansion (OPE) of the quantum fields is elevated to a fundamental status, and the quantum field theory is viewed as being defined by its OPE. Since the OPE coefficients may be better behaved than any quantities having to do with states, we suggest that it may be possible to perturbatively construct the OPE coefficients--and, thus, the quantum field theory. By contrast, ground/vacuum states--in spacetimes, such as Minkowski spacetime, where they may be defined--cannot vary analytically with the parameters of the theory. We argue that this implies that composite fields may acquire nonvanishing vacuum state expectation values due to nonperturbative effects. We speculate that this could account for the existence of a nonvanishing vacuum expectation value of the stress-energy tensor of a quantum field occurring at a scale much smaller than the natural scales of the theory.Comment: 9 pages, essay awarded 4th prize by Gravity Research Foundatio

Comparison between various notions of conserved charges in asymptotically AdS-spacetimes

We derive hamiltionian generators of asymptotic symmetries for general relativity with asymptotic AdS boundary conditions using the ``covariant phase space'' method of Wald et al. We then compare our results with other definitions that have been proposed in the literature. We find that our definition agrees with that proposed by Ashtekar et al, with the spinor definition, and with the background dependent definition of Henneaux and Teitelboim. Our definition disagrees with the one obtained from the ``counterterm subtraction method,'' but the difference is found to consist only of a ``constant offset'' that is determined entirely in terms of the boundary metric. We finally discuss and justify our boundary conditions by a linear perturbation analysis, and we comment on generalizations of our boundary conditions, as well as inclusion of matter fields.Comment: 64p, Latex, no figures, v2: references added, typos corrected, v3: some equations correcte

Perturbative Construction of Models of Algebraic Quantum Field Theory

We review the construction of models of algebraic quantum field theory by renormalized perturbation theory.Comment: 38 page