Microcausality in Curved Space-Time
High Energy Physics - Theory
2008-11-26 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Abstract
It is well known that in Lorentz invariant quantum field theories in flat space the commutator of space-like separated local operators vanishes (microcausality). We provide two different arguments showing that this is a consequence of the causal structure of the classical theory, rather than of Lorentz invariance. In particular, microcausality holds in arbitrary curved space-times, where Lorentz invariance is explicitly broken by the background metric. As illustrated by an explicit calculation on a cylinder this property is rather non trivial at the level of Feynman diagrams.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0709.1483,
title = {Microcausality in Curved Space-Time},
author = {Sergei Dubovsky and Alberto Nicolis and Enrico Trincherini and Giovanni Villadoro},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0709.1483},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
21 pages, 4 figures