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Gravity-Induced Vacuum Dominance

William C. C. Lima and Daniel A. T. Vanzella
Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 161102 – Published 20 April 2010
Physics logo See Synopsis: Waking up the quantum vacuum

Abstract

It has been widely believed that, except in very extreme situations, the influence of gravity on quantum fields should amount to just small, subdominant contributions. This view seemed to be endorsed by the seminal results obtained over the last decades in the context of renormalization of quantum fields in curved spacetimes. Here, however, we argue that this belief is false by showing that there exist well-behaved spacetime evolutions where the vacuum energy density of free quantum fields is forced, by the very same background spacetime, to become dominant over any classical energy-density component. By estimating the time scale for the vacuum energy density to become dominant, and therefore for backreaction on the background spacetime to become important, we argue that this (infrared) vacuum dominance may bear unexpected astrophysical and cosmological implications.

  • Received 7 December 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.161102

©2010 American Physical Society

Synopsis

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Waking up the quantum vacuum

Published 3 May 2010

A quantum field propagating in a curved spacetime can have fluctuations in its vacuum energy density that are large enough to completely dominate its classical energy density.

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Authors & Affiliations

William C. C. Lima* and Daniel A. T. Vanzella

  • Instituto de Física de São Carlos, Universidade de São Paulo, Caixa Postal 369, CEP 15980-900, São Carlos, SP, Brazil

  • *william@ursa.ifsc.usp.br
  • vanzella@ifsc.usp.br

See Also

Neutron Star Formation Could Awaken the Vacuum

Don Monroe
Phys. Rev. Focus 26, 14 (2010)

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Issue

Vol. 104, Iss. 16 — 23 April 2010

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