Antiscreening in perturbative quantum gravity and resolving the Newtonian singularity
Abstract
We calculate the quantum corrections to the Newtonian potential induced by a massless, nonminimally coupled scalar field on Minkowski background. We make use of the graviton vacuum polarization calculated in our previous work and solve the equation of motion nonperturbatively. When written as the quantum-corrected gauge invariant Bardeen potentials, our results show that quantum effects generically antiscreen the Newtonian singularity 1/r. This result supports the point of view that gravity on (super-)Planckian scales is an asymptotically safe theory. In addition, we show that, in the presence of quantum fluctuations of a massless, (non)minimally coupled scalar field, dynamical gravitons propagate superluminally. The effect is, however, unbservably small and it is hence of academic interest only.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1209.4779,
title = {Antiscreening in perturbative quantum gravity and resolving the Newtonian singularity},
author = {Anja Marunovic and Tomislav Prokopec},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1209.4779},
year = {2013}
}
Comments
17 pages, 7 figures; a discussion of the relation to the Barvinsky-Vilkovisky formalism is included in v2; matches published version