Vacuum polarization in a cosmic string spacetime induced by flat boundary

TL;DR

This paper investigates how a flat boundary affects vacuum polarization phenomena for a massive scalar field in higher-dimensional cosmic string spacetimes, focusing on boundary conditions like Dirichlet and Neumann.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of vacuum expectation values in the presence of boundaries in cosmic string spacetimes, extending previous work to higher dimensions and different boundary conditions.

Findings

Boundary conditions significantly influence vacuum polarization effects.

Explicit expressions for the field squared and energy-momentum tensor are derived.

Results highlight the role of boundary placement and spacetime dimensionality.

Abstract

In this paper we analyze the vacuum expectation values of the field squared and the energy-momentum tensor associated to a massive scalar field in a higher dimensional cosmic string spacetime, obeying Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions on the surface orthogonal to the string.