English

Extracting the Maxwell charge from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2008-11-26 v1 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We consider the Wheeler-De Witt equation as a device for finding eigenvalues of a Sturm-Liouville problem. In particular, we will focus our attention on the electric (magnetic) Maxwell charge. In this context, we interpret the Maxwell charge as an eigenvalue of the Wheeler-De Witt equation generated by the gravitational field fluctuations. A variational approach with Gaussian trial wave functionals is used as a method to study the existence of such an eigenvalue. We restrict the analysis to the graviton sector of the perturbation. We approximate the equation to one loop in a Schwarzschild background and a zeta function regularization is involved to handle with divergences. The regularization is closely related to the subtraction procedure appearing in the computation of Casimir energy in a curved background. A renormalization procedure is introduced to remove the infinities together with a renormalization group equation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0807.0082,
  title  = {Extracting the Maxwell charge from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation},
  author = {Remo Garattini},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0807.0082},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

6 pages. Accepted for publication in Physics Letters B

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