A massless scalar field in Robertson-Walker spacetimes: Adiabatic regularization and Green's function

TL;DR

This paper investigates adiabatic regularization of a massless scalar field in flat Robertson-Walker spacetimes, revealing conditions under which the spectra vanish or become positive, and addressing IR divergences.

Contribution

It extends adiabatic regularization results to general RW spacetimes and explores the effects of different couplings and regularization orders on the spectra.

Findings

Zero regularized spectra for conformal coupling in all RW spacetimes.

Vanishing spectra during radiation and matter-dominant stages for minimal coupling.

Higher-order regularization can make spectra positive but introduces IR divergences.

Abstract

We study adiabatic regularization of a coupling massless scalar field in general spatially flat Robertson-Walker (RW) spacetimes. For the conformally-coupling, the 0th-order regularized power spectrum and 0th-order regularized stress tensor are zero, and no trace anomaly exists in general RW spacetimes. This is a new result which extents those found in de Sitter space. For the minimally-coupling, the regularized spectra are also zero in the radiation-dominant stage, the matter-dominant stage, and de Sitter space as well. The vanishing of these adiabatically regularized spectra are also confirmed by direct regularization of the Green's functions. For a general coupling and general RW spacetimes, the regularized spectra can be negative under the conventional prescription. By going to higher order of regularization, the spectra will generally become positive, but will also acquire IR divergence which is inevitable for a massless field. To avoid the IR divergence, the inside-horizon regularization is applied. By these procedures, one will eventually achieve nonnegative, UV- and IR-convergent power spectrum and spectral energy density.