Casimir effect: running Newton constant or cosmological term

TL;DR

This paper explores the non-perturbative vacuum structure of Euclidean quantum gravity, revealing two phases with distinct curvature and cosmological constant behaviors, and discusses the Casimir effect's role in gravity's UV properties.

Contribution

It introduces a phase analysis of Euclidean de Sitter spaces in quantum gravity, linking vacuum instability to metric condensates and identifying phases with different curvature and cosmological constants.

Findings

Two phases with large and small curvature identified.

In the strongly curved phase, the induced cosmological constant is positive.

In the weakly curved phase, the cosmological constant tends to be negative.

Abstract

We argue that the instability of Euclidean Einstein gravity is an indication that the vacuum is non perturbative and contains a condensate of the metric tensor in a manner reminiscent of Yang-Mills theories. As a simple step toward the characterization of such a vacuum the value of the one-loop effective action is computed for Euclidean de Sitter spaces as a function of the curvature when the unstable conformal modes are held fixed. Two phases are found, one where the curvature is large and gravitons should be confined and another one which appears to be weakly coupled and tends to be flat. The induced cosmological constant is positive or negative in the strongly or weakly curved phase, respectively. The relevance of the Casimir effect in understanding the UV sensitivity of gravity is pointed out.