Aspects of Nonlocality in Quantum Field Theory, Quantum Gravity and Cosmology

TL;DR

This paper explores nonlocal phenomena in quantum field theory, gravity, and cosmology, introducing a new ghost-free nonlocal cosmological model that can generate de Sitter expansion and connect different gravitational regimes.

Contribution

It presents a novel nonlocal cosmological model that is ghost-free and capable of producing de Sitter solutions with a variable dark energy scale.

Findings

Introduces a new nonlocal cosmology model with de Sitter solutions.

Demonstrates the model's ability to interpolate between different gravitational regimes.

Discusses the application of the Euclidean Schwinger-Keldysh technique to nonlocal effective equations.

Abstract

This paper contains a collection of essays on nonlocal phenomena in quantum field theory, gravity and cosmology. Mechanisms of nonlocal contributions to the quantum effective action are discussed within the covariant perturbation expansion in field strengths and spacetime curvatures and the nonperturbative method based on the late time asymptotics of the heat kernel. Euclidean version of the Schwinger-Keldysh technique for quantum expectation values is presented as a special rule of obtaining the nonlocal effective equations of motion for the mean quantum field from the Euclidean effective action. This rule is applied to a new model of ghost free nonlocal cosmology which can generate the de Sitter stage of cosmological evolution at an arbitrary value of $\varLambda$ -- a model of dark energy with its scale played by the dynamical variable that can be fixed by a kind of a scaling symmetry breaking mechanism. This model is shown to interpolate between the superhorizon phase of gravity theory mediated by a scalar mode and the short distance general relativistic limit in a special frame which is related by a nonlocal conformal transformation to the original metric. The role of compactness and regularity of spacetime in the Euclidean version of the Schwinger-Keldysh technique is discussed.