Adiabatic regularization of the graviton stress-energy tensor in de Sitter space-time

2004/07/31 by F. Finelli⋆, F. Finelli, G. Marozzi +4 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #astro-ph #gr-qc #hep-ph #hep-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.71.023522

published as Phys.Rev.D71:023522,2005 · 5 pages, revtex, final version accepted for publication in PRD

openalex publication_date 2005/01/01 · arxiv created 2005/01/14 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We study the renormalized energy-momentum tensor of gravitons in a de Sitter space-time. After canonically quantizing only the physical degrees of freedom, we adopt the standard adiabatic subtraction used for massless minimally coupled scalar fields as a regularization procedure and find that the energy density of gravitons in the E(3) invariant vacuum is proportional to H⁴, where H is the Hubble parameter, but with a positive sign. According to this result the scalar expansion rate, which is gauge invariant in de Sitter space-time, is increased by the fluctuations. This implies that gravitons may then add to conformally coupled matter in driving the Starobinsky model of inflation.

Citations

• Quantum Fields in Curved Space
• Energy-momentum tensor of cosmological fluctuations during inflation
• Quantized Fields and Particle Creation in Expanding Universes. I

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