Bimetric renormalization group flows in quantum Einstein gravity
- Institute of Physics, University of Mainz, Staudingerweg 7, D-55099 Mainz (Germany)
Research Highlights: > Gravitational Effective Action in the bimetric truncation. > First study of the full gravitational flow with a bimetric structure. > The non-trivial gravitational RG fixed point persists under bimetric truncations. > Second non-trivial fixed point emerges, which may control the IR behavior of the theory. - Abstract: The formulation of an exact functional renormalization group equation for quantum Einstein gravity necessitates that the underlying effective average action depends on two metrics, a dynamical metric giving the vacuum expectation value of the quantum field, and a background metric supplying the coarse graining scale. The central requirement of 'background independence' is met by leaving the background metric completely arbitrary. This bimetric structure entails that the effective average action may contain three classes of interactions: those built from the dynamical metric only, terms which are purely background, and those involving a mixture of both metrics. This work initiates the first study of the full-fledged gravitational RG flow, which explicitly accounts for this bimetric structure, by considering an ansatz for the effective average action which includes all three classes of interactions. It is shown that the non-trivial gravitational RG fixed point central to the asymptotic safety program persists upon disentangling the dynamical and background terms. Moreover, upon including the mixed terms, a second non-trivial fixed point emerges, which may control the theory's IR behavior.
- OSTI ID:
- 21579843
- Journal Information:
- Annals of Physics (New York), Vol. 326, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1016/j.aop.2010.11.006; PII: S0003-4916(10)00195-8; Copyright (c) 2010 Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, All rights reserved.; ISSN 0003-4916
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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