1995/08/04 by Giampiero Esposito, Gennaro Miele, Luigi Rosa +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Coupling (piping) #Field (mathematics) #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Quantum #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum field theory #Scalar (mathematics) #Scalar field #Scalar theories of gravitation #Semiclassical physics #Vacuum expectation value #Vacuum polarization #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0264-9381/12/12/015
published as Class.Quant.Grav. 12 (1995) 2995-3005 · 17 pages, plain TeX + 5 uuencoded figures
arxiv created 1995/08/04 · openalex publication_date 1995/12/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Electrodynamics for self-interacting scalar fields in spatially flat Friedmann - Robertson - Walker spacetimes is studied. The corresponding 1-loop field equation for the expectation value of the complex scalar field in the conformal vacuum is derived. For exponentially expanding universes, the equations for the Bogoliubov coefficients describing the coupling of the scalar field to gravity are solved numerically. They yield a non-local correction to the Coleman - Weinberg effective potential which does not modify the pattern of minima found in static de Sitter space. Such a correction contains a dissipative term which, accounting for the decay of the classical configuration in scalar field quanta, may be relevant for the reheating stage. The physical meaning of the non-local term in the semiclassical field equation is investigated by evaluating this contribution for various background field configurations.