No Arabic abstract
Vacuum-energy calculations with ideal reflecting boundaries are plagued by boundary divergences, which presumably correspond to real (but finite) physical effects occurring near the boundary. Our working hypothesis is that the stress tensor for idealized boundary conditions with some finite cutoff should be a reasonable ad hoc model for the true situation. The theory will have a sensible renormalized limit when the cutoff is taken away; this requires making sense of the Einstein equation with a distributional source. Calculations with the standard ultraviolet cutoff reveal an inconsistency between energy and pressure similar to the one that arises in noncovariant regularizations of cosmological vacuum energy. The problem disappears, however, if the cutoff is a spatial point separation in a neutral direction parallel to the boundary. Here we demonstrate these claims in detail, first for a single flat reflecting wall intersected by a test boundary, then more rigorously for a region of finite cross section surrounded by four reflecting walls. We also show how the moment-expansion theorem can be applied to the distributional limits of the source and the solution of the Einstein equation, resulting in a mathematically consistent differential equation where cutoff-dependent coefficients have been identified as renormalizations of properties of the boundary. A number of issues surrounding the interpretation of these results are aired.
With a view toward application of the Pauli-Villars regularization method to the Casimir energy of boundaries, we calculate the expectation values of the components of the stress tensor of a confined massive field in 1+1 space-time dimensions. Previous papers by Hays and Fulling are bridged and generalized. The Green function for the time-independent Schrodinger equation is constructed from the Green function for the whole line by the method of images; equivalently, the one-dimensional system is solved exactly in terms of closed classical paths and periodic orbits. Terms in the energy density and in the eigenvalue density attributable to the two boundaries individually and those attributable to the confinement of the field to a finite interval are distinguished so that their physical origins are clear. Then the pressure is found similarly from the cylinder kernel, the Green function associated most directly with an exponential frequency cutoff of the Fourier mode expansion. Finally, we discuss how the theory could be rendered finite by the Pauli-Villars method.
We show that in the vacuum inflation model, the gravitational baryogenesis mechanism will produce the baryon asymmetry. We analyze the evolution of entropy and baryon number in the vacuum inflation model. The comparison between dilution speed and the chemical potential may give a natural interpretation for decouple temperature of the gravitational baryogenesis interaction. From the result, the mechanism can give acceptable baryon-to-entropy ratio in the vacuum inflation model.
This dissertation presents a semiclassical analysis of conical topology change in $1+1$ spacetime dimensions wherein, to lowest order, the ambient spacetime is classical and fixed while the scalar field coupled to it is quantized. The vacuum expectation value of the scalar field stress-energy tensor is calculated via two different approaches. The first of these involves the explicit determination of the so called Sorkin-Johnston state on the cone and an original regularization scheme, while the latter employs the conformal vacuum and the more conventional point-splitting renormalization. It is found that conical topology change seems not to suffer from the same pathologies that trousers-type topology change does. This provides tentative agreement with conjectures due to Sorkin and Borde, which attempt to classify topology changing spacetimes with respect to their Morse critical points and in particular, that the cone and yarmulke in $1+1$ dimensions lack critical points of unit Morse index.
Junction conditions for vacuum solutions in five-dimensional Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity are studied. We focus on those cases where two spherically symmetric regions of space-time are joined in such a way that the induced stress tensor on the junction surface vanishes. So a spherical vacuum shell, containing no matter, arises as a boundary between two regions of the space-time. A general analysis is given of solutions that can be constructed by this method of geometric surgery. Such solutions are a generalized kind of spherically symmetric empty space solutions, described by metric functions of the class $C^0$. New global structures arise with surprising features. In particular, we show that vacuum spherically symmetric wormholes do exist in this theory. These can be regarded as gravitational solitons, which connect two asymptotically (Anti) de-Sitter spaces with different masses and/or different effective cosmological constants. We prove the existence of both static and dynamical solutions and discuss their (in)stability under perturbations that preserve the symmetry. This leads us to discuss a new type of instability that arises in five-dimensional Lovelock theory of gravity for certain values of the coupling of the Gauss-Bonnet term. The issues of existence and uniqueness of solutions and determinism in the dynamical evolution are also discussed.
In a spacetime divided into two regions $U_1$ and $U_2$ by a hypersurface $Sigma$, a perturbation of the field in $U_1$ is coupled to perturbations in $U_2$ by means of the holographic imprint that it leaves on $Sigma$. The linearized gluing field equation constrains perturbations on the two sides of a dividing hypersurface, and this linear operator may have a nontrivial null space. A nontrivial perturbation of the field leaving a holographic imprint on a dividing hypersurface which does not affect perturbations on the other side should be considered physically irrelevant. This consideration, together with a locality requirement, leads to the notion of gauge equivalence in Lagrangian field theory over confined spacetime domains. Physical observables in a spacetime domain $U$ can be calculated integrating (possibly non local) gauge invariant conserved currents on hypersurfaces such that $partial Sigma subset partial U$. The set of observables of this type is sufficient to distinguish gauge inequivalent solutions. The integral of a conserved current on a hypersurface is sensitive only to its homology class $[Sigma]$, and if $U$ is homeomorphic to a four ball the homology class is determined by its boundary $S = partial Sigma$. We will see that a result of Anderson and Torre implies that for a class of theories including vacuum General Relativity all local observables are holographic in the sense that they can be written as integrals of over the two dimensional surface $S$. However, non holographic observables are needed to distinguish between gauge inequivalent solutions.