Path integral factorization and the gravitational effective action

Journal Article · 26 December 2023 · Classical and Quantum Gravity

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6382/ad1449 · OSTI ID:2263397

Draper, Patrick; Farkas, Szilard; Karydas, Manthos

Abstract We discuss the factorization and continuity properties of fields in the Euclidean gravitational path integral with higher dimension operators constructed from powers of the Riemann tensor. We construct the boundary terms corresponding to the microcanonical ensemble and show that the saddle point approximation to the path integral with a quasilocal energy constraint generally yields a saddle point with discontinuous temperature. This extends a previous result for the Euclidean Schwarzschild–de Sitter geometry in Einstein gravity and shows that it is robust against at least some types of quantum corrections from heavy fields. As an application, we compute the entropy of SdS in D  = 4 using the BTZ method. Our result matches the entropy calculated using Wald’s formula.

• Research Organization: Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC); USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
• Grant/Contract Number: SC0015655
• OSTI ID: 2263397
• Journal Information: Classical and Quantum Gravity, Journal Name: Classical and Quantum Gravity Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 41; ISSN 0264-9381
• Publisher: IOP PublishingCopyright Statement
• Country of Publication: United Kingdom
• Language: English