The Multiplicative Anomaly of Regularized Functional Determinants

The multiplicative anomaly related to the functional regularized determinants involving products of elliptic operators is introduced and some of its properties discussed. Its relevance concerning the mathematical consistency is stressed. With regard to its possible physical relevance, some examples are illustrated.Comment: 4 pages, contribution to "Quantum Gravity and Spectral Geometry", Naples July 2001

DILATONIC GRAVITY NEAR TWO DIMENSIONS AND ASYMPTOTIC FREEDOM OF THE GRAVITATIONAL COUPLING CONSTANT

Two models of dilatonic gravity are investigated: (i) dilaton-Yang-Mills gravity and (ii) higher-derivative dilatonic gravity. Both are renormalizable in $2+\epsilon$ dimensions and have a smooth limit for $\epsilon \rightarrow 0$. The corresponding one-loop effective actions and beta-functions are found. Both theories are shown to possess a non-trivial ultraviolet fixed point ---for all dilatonic couplings--- in which the gravitational constant is asymptotically free. It is shown that in the regime of asymptotic freedom the matter central charge can be significantly increased by two different mechanisms ---as compared with pure dilatonic gravity, where $n < 24$.Comment: LaTeX, 10 pages, no figure

Casimir effect in rugby-ball type flux compactifications

As a continuation of the work in \cite{mns}, we discuss the Casimir effect for a massless bulk scalar field in a 4D toy model of a 6D warped flux compactification model,to stabilize the volume modulus. The one-loop effective potential for the volume modulus has a form similar to the Coleman-Weinberg potential. The stability of the volume modulus against quantum corrections is related to an appropriate heat kernel coefficient. However, to make any physical predictions after volume stabilization, knowledge of the derivative of the zeta function, $\zeta'(0)$ (in a conformally related spacetime) is also required. By adding up the exact mass spectrum using zeta function regularization, we present a revised analysis of the effective potential. Finally, we discuss some physical implications, especially concerning the degree of the hierarchy between the fundamental energy scales on the branes. For a larger degree of warping our new results are very similar to the previous ones \cite{mns} and imply a larger hierarchy. In the non-warped (rugby-ball) limit the ratio tends to converge to the same value, independently of the bulk dilaton coupling.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in PR

Multiplicative anomaly and zeta factorization

Some aspects of the multiplicative anomaly of zeta determinants are investigated. A rather simple approach is adopted and, in particular, the question of zeta function factorization, together with its possible relation with the multiplicative anomaly issue is discussed. We look primordially into the zeta functions instead of the determinants themselves, as was done in previous work. That provides a supplementary view, regarding the appearance of the multiplicative anomaly. Finally, we briefly discuss determinants of zeta functions that are not in the pseudodifferential operator framework.Comment: 20 pages, AIP styl

Topology, Mass and Casimir energy

The vacuum expectation value of the stress energy tensor for a massive scalar field with arbitrary coupling in flat spaces with non-trivial topology is discussed. We calculate the Casimir energy in these spaces employing the recently proposed {\it optical approach} based on closed classical paths. The evaluation of the Casimir energy consists in an expansion in terms of the lengths of these paths. We will show how different paths with corresponding weight factors contribute in the calculation. The optical approach is also used to find the mass and temperature dependence of the Casimir energy in a cavity and it is shown that the massive fields cannot be neglected in high and low temperature regimes. The same approach is applied to twisted as well as spinor fields and the results are compared with those in the literature.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figure, RevTex format, Typos corrected and references adde

Uses of zeta regularization in QFT with boundary conditions: a cosmo-topological Casimir effect

Zeta regularization has proven to be a powerful and reliable tool for the regularization of the vacuum energy density in ideal situations. With the Hadamard complement, it has been shown to provide finite (and meaningful) answers too in more involved cases, as when imposing physical boundary conditions (BCs) in two-- and higher--dimensional surfaces (being able to mimic, in a very convenient way, other {\it ad hoc} cut-offs, as non-zero depths). What we have considered is the {\it additional} contribution to the cc coming from the non-trivial topology of space or from specific boundary conditions imposed on braneworld models (kind of cosmological Casimir effects). Assuming someone will be able to prove (some day) that the ground value of the cc is zero, as many had suspected until very recently, we will then be left with this incremental value coming from the topology or BCs. We show that this value can have the correct order of magnitude in a number of quite reasonable models involving small and large compactified scales and/or brane BCs, and supergravitons.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure, Talk given at the Seventh International Workshop Quantum Field Theory under the Influence of External Conditions, QFEXT'05, Barcelona, September 5-9, 200

Generating trees for permutations avoiding generalized patterns

We construct generating trees with one, two, and three labels for some classes of permutations avoiding generalized patterns of length 3 and 4. These trees are built by adding at each level an entry to the right end of the permutation, which allows us to incorporate the adjacency condition about some entries in an occurrence of a generalized pattern. We use these trees to find functional equations for the generating functions enumerating these classes of permutations with respect to different parameters. In several cases we solve them using the kernel method and some ideas of Bousquet-M\'elou. We obtain refinements of known enumerative results and find new ones.Comment: 17 pages, to appear in Ann. Com

Complex fermion mass term, regularization and CP violation

It is well known that the CP violating theta term of QCD can be converted to a phase in the quark mass term. However, a theory with a complex mass term for quarks can be regularized so as not to violate CP, for example through a zeta function. The contradiction is resolved through the recognition of a dependence on the regularization or measure. The appropriate choice of regularization is discussed and implications for the strong CP problem are pointed out.Comment: REVTeX, 4 page

Asymptotic enumeration of permutations avoiding generalized patterns

Motivated by the recent proof of the Stanley-Wilf conjecture, we study the asymptotic behavior of the number of permutations avoiding a generalized pattern. Generalized patterns allow the requirement that some pairs of letters must be adjacent in an occurrence of the pattern in the permutation, and consecutive patterns are a particular case of them. We determine the asymptotic behavior of the number of permutations avoiding a consecutive pattern, showing that they are an exponentially small proportion of the total number of permutations. For some other generalized patterns we give partial results, showing that the number of permutations avoiding them grows faster than for classical patterns but more slowly than for consecutive patterns.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, to be published in Adv. in Appl. Mat