corner
corner

Phys. Rev. D 58, 124007 (1998) [18 pages]

How unique is the expected stress-energy tensor of a massive scalar field?

Download: PDF (312 kB) Buy this article Export: BibTeX or EndNote (RIS)

Wolfgang Tichy and Éanna É. Flanagan
Cornell University, Newman Laboratory, Ithaca, New York 14853-5001

Received 9 June 1998; published 13 November 1998

We show that the set of ambiguities in the renormalized expected stress-energy tensor allowed by the Wald axioms is much larger for a massive scalar field (an infinite number of free parameters) than for a massless scalar field (two free parameters). We also use the closed-time-path effective action formalism of Schwinger to calculate the expected value of the stress-energy tensor in the incoming vacuum state, for a massive scalar field, on any spacetime which is a linear perturbation off Minkowski spacetime. This result generalizes an earlier result of Horowitz and also Jordan in the massless case, and can be used as a testbed for comparing different calculational methods.

© 1998 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.58.124007
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevD.58.124007
PACS:
04.62.+v, 03.70.+k, 04.20.Cv