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Title: On the infrared behaviour of some non-Minkowskian quantum fields

Abstract

The infrared structure of some quantum fields in several spacetimes was studied. Here infrared refers to effects associated with modes whose wave length is large compared to the characteristic scale of the space. Several situations dealing with aspects of this question are analyzed. It is shown that the infrared behavior of a massless scalar field and an antisymmetric tensor field in de Sitter space are different even though these two fields appear to be formally equivalent. The scalar field does not have a de Sitter-invariant quantum state, while the antisymmetric tensor is shown to have a well-behaved de Sitter-invariant vacuum. The second topic considered is the behavior of the expectation value of phi squared for a massless scalar field phi whose quantum state is free from infrared divergences in spatially flat Robertson-Walker universes. If the universe expands as a power of comoving time and the power is greater than 3/2, then phi squared grows for a finite interval of time. The next topic discussed is zero-frequency modes of massless scalar fields and vector fields in compact spaces. In some spaces they are growing functions of time. It is shown that growth rates can be related to initial conditions of themore » theory if the mass of the field is a function of time which varies from a constant in the past to 0 in the future. Growth in zero modes of a scalar field phi would lead to growth in phi squared. The relevance of these growing expectation values of squared field operators in global symmetry breaking is studied.« less

Authors:
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Tufts Univ., Medford, MA (USA)
OSTI Identifier:
6304199
Resource Type:
Miscellaneous
Resource Relation:
Other Information: Ph.D. Thesis
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS; SPACE-TIME MODEL; INFRARED SPECTRA; EXPANSION; SCALARS; SYMMETRY BREAKING; TENSORS; THEORETICAL DATA; TIME DEPENDENCE; UNIVERSE; VECTOR FIELDS; CLUSTER EMISSION MODEL; DATA; INFORMATION; MATHEMATICAL MODELS; MULTIPERIPHERAL MODEL; NUMERICAL DATA; PARTICLE MODELS; PERIPHERAL MODELS; SPECTRA; 640106* - Astrophysics & Cosmology- Cosmology

Citation Formats

Pathinayake, C. On the infrared behaviour of some non-Minkowskian quantum fields. United States: N. p., 1989. Web.
Pathinayake, C. On the infrared behaviour of some non-Minkowskian quantum fields. United States.
Pathinayake, C. 1989. "On the infrared behaviour of some non-Minkowskian quantum fields". United States.
@article{osti_6304199,
title = {On the infrared behaviour of some non-Minkowskian quantum fields},
author = {Pathinayake, C},
abstractNote = {The infrared structure of some quantum fields in several spacetimes was studied. Here infrared refers to effects associated with modes whose wave length is large compared to the characteristic scale of the space. Several situations dealing with aspects of this question are analyzed. It is shown that the infrared behavior of a massless scalar field and an antisymmetric tensor field in de Sitter space are different even though these two fields appear to be formally equivalent. The scalar field does not have a de Sitter-invariant quantum state, while the antisymmetric tensor is shown to have a well-behaved de Sitter-invariant vacuum. The second topic considered is the behavior of the expectation value of phi squared for a massless scalar field phi whose quantum state is free from infrared divergences in spatially flat Robertson-Walker universes. If the universe expands as a power of comoving time and the power is greater than 3/2, then phi squared grows for a finite interval of time. The next topic discussed is zero-frequency modes of massless scalar fields and vector fields in compact spaces. In some spaces they are growing functions of time. It is shown that growth rates can be related to initial conditions of the theory if the mass of the field is a function of time which varies from a constant in the past to 0 in the future. Growth in zero modes of a scalar field phi would lead to growth in phi squared. The relevance of these growing expectation values of squared field operators in global symmetry breaking is studied.},
doi = {},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6304199}, journal = {},
number = ,
volume = ,
place = {United States},
year = {Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 1989},
month = {Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 1989}
}

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