2018/01/30 by Massimo Giovannini
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Classical mechanics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #De Sitter space #De Sitter universe #Electric field #Mathematical physics #Physics #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum mechanics #Spacetime #Theoretical physics #Universe #astro-ph.CO #de Sitter invariant special relativity #gr-qc #hep-ph #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.97.061301
published as Phys. Rev. D 97, 061301 (2018) · 9 pages
arxiv created 2018/01/30 · openalex publication_date 2018/03/15 · arxiv updated 2018/04/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
During a de Sitter stage of expansion, the spectator fields of different spin are constrained by the critical density bound and by further requirements determined by their specific physical nature. The evolution of spectator electric fields in conformally flat background geometries is occasionally concocted by postulating the existence of ad hoc currents, but this apparently innocuous trick violates the second law of thermodynamics. Such a problem occurs, in particular, for those configurations (customarily employed for the analysis of the Schwinger effect in four-dimensional de Sitter backgrounds) leading to an electric energy density which is practically unaffected by the expansion of the underlying geometry. The obtained results are compared with more mundane situations where Joule heating develops in the early stages of a quasi-de Sitter phase.