The thermal backreaction of a scalar field in de Sitter spacetime
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866911303044431872 |
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| author | Irges, Nikos Kalogirou, Antonis Koutroulis, Fotis |
| author_facet | Irges, Nikos Kalogirou, Antonis Koutroulis, Fotis |
| contents | We argue that a scalar field in de Sitter spacetime should feel explicit thermal effects associated with its curvature. Starting from the Bunch-Davies vacuum and a scalar field with small mass compared to the de Sitter curvature, we use the thermo-field dynamics formalism in order to expose these thermal effects. We compute the thermal Wightman function connecting two spacetime points and from it, via the point-splitting regularization technique, the renormalized thermal energy-momentum tensor. We then examine how these corrections affect the de Sitter geometry by solving for the semi-classical backreaction and find that their sign depends on the initial conditions. In order to place our results in context, we compare them to the corresponding 2-loop quantum gravity correction to the cosmological constant derived in [1]. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_08774 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | The thermal backreaction of a scalar field in de Sitter spacetime Irges, Nikos Kalogirou, Antonis Koutroulis, Fotis High Energy Physics - Theory General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology We argue that a scalar field in de Sitter spacetime should feel explicit thermal effects associated with its curvature. Starting from the Bunch-Davies vacuum and a scalar field with small mass compared to the de Sitter curvature, we use the thermo-field dynamics formalism in order to expose these thermal effects. We compute the thermal Wightman function connecting two spacetime points and from it, via the point-splitting regularization technique, the renormalized thermal energy-momentum tensor. We then examine how these corrections affect the de Sitter geometry by solving for the semi-classical backreaction and find that their sign depends on the initial conditions. In order to place our results in context, we compare them to the corresponding 2-loop quantum gravity correction to the cosmological constant derived in [1]. |
| title | The thermal backreaction of a scalar field in de Sitter spacetime |
| topic | High Energy Physics - Theory General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08774 |