2013/09/03 by Diana López Nacir, Diana L. López Nacir, Francisco D. Mazzitelli +1 · 41 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Background field method #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Curved space #De Sitter space #De Sitter universe #Dimensional regularization #Effective action #Hartree #Lambda #Mathematical physics #Physics #Propagator #Quantum #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum field theory #Quantum fluctuation #Quantum mechanics #Regularization (linguistics) #Renormalization #Scalar field #Spacetime #Universe #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.89.024006
published in Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields 89(2) (American Physical Society) · 40 pages, 8 figures
arxiv created 2013/09/03 · openalex publication_date 2014/01/07 · arxiv updated 2014/01/15 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We consider a quantum scalar field with a \ensuremathλ\ensuremathφ4 interaction in curved spacetimes. The quantum effects are taken into account nonperturbatively using the Hartree approximation to the two-particle irreducible effective action. Although this approximation has been considered in many previous works, we reconsider it using a consistent nonperturbative renormalization procedure, which we extend to general curved spacetimes. We obtain the renormalized equations for the mean field and for the propagator of the fluctuations, showing explicitly their independence on the arbitrary scale introduced by the regularization scheme. We apply our results to the particular case of de Sitter spacetime and discuss spontaneous symmetry breaking. The results depend strongly on the renormalization procedure.