Gravitational Phase Transitions in Infrared Quantum Gravity

TL;DR

This paper investigates how curvature can induce phase transitions in infrared quantum gravity, providing detailed calculations of the effective potential and estimating critical curvature values for different parameters.

Contribution

It offers a detailed calculation of the one-loop effective potential in infrared quantum gravity, demonstrating the possibility of curvature-induced phase transitions.

Findings

Curvature can induce phase transitions in infrared quantum gravity.

The effective potential was calculated including linear curvature terms.

Critical curvature values were estimated for various parameters.

Abstract

The conformal anomaly induced sector of four-dimensional quantum gravity (infrared quantum gravity) ---which has been introduced by Antoniadis and Mottola--- is here studied on a curved fiducial background. The one-loop effective potential for the effective conformal factor theory is calculated with accuracy, including terms linear in the curvature. It is proven that a curvature induced phase transition can actually take place. An estimation of the critical curvature for different choices of the parameters of the theory is given.