1,721,056 research outputs found
The heat-kernel and the average effective potential
No full textWe discuss the definition of the average effective action in terms of the heat-kernel. As an example we examine a model describing a self-interacting scalar field, both in flat and curved background, and study the renormalization group flow of some of the parameters characterizing its effective potential. Some implications of the running of these parameters for inflationary cosmology are also briefly discussed. © 1995
Average effective potential for the conformal factor
No full textWe discuss a method of quantization which produces a nontrivial effective potential for the conformal factor of the metric, both in the case of matter fields propagating in a fixed background geometry, and in the case of pure gravity. In particular, using the method of the average effective potential, we compute the scale dependence of the conformal factor. We offer some speculations on the possible significance of our results. © 1995
Quantum mechanical breaking of local GL(4) invariance
No full textWe consider the gravitational coupling of a scalar field, in a reformulation of General Relativity exhibiting local GL(4) invariance at the classical level. We compute the one-loop contribution of the scalar to the quantum effective potential of the vierbein and find that it does not have GL(4) invariance. The minima of the effective potential occur for a vierbein which is proportional to the unit matrix
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