English

Adiabatic regularization for spin-$1$ fields

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2023-12-12 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We analyze the adiabatic regularization scheme to renormalize Proca fields in a four-dimensional Friedmann-Lema\^{i}tre-Robertson-Walker spacetime. The adiabatic method is well established for scalar and spin-1/21/2 fields, but is not yet fully understood for spin-11 fields. We give the details of the construction and show that, in the massless limit, the renormalized stress-energy tensor of the Proca field is closely related to that of a minimally coupled scalar field. Our result is in full agreement with other approaches, based on the effective action, which also show a discontinuity in the massless limit. The scalar field can be naturally regarded as a St\"ueckelberg-type field. We also test the consistency of our results in de Sitter space.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2310.11860,
  title  = {Adiabatic regularization for spin-$1$ fields},
  author = {F. Javier Marañón-González and José Navarro-Salas},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.11860},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

10 pages. V2: minor changes, misprints corrected, matches the published version (Phys. Rev. D)

R2 v1 2026-06-28T12:54:13.787Z