English

Which part of the stress-energy tensor gravitates?

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2020-02-26 v1

Abstract

We consider the possibility that, in the semiclassical Einstein equation for cosmological spacetimes, gravity is sourced by the amount of stress-energy that is above that of the instantaneous ground state. For this possibility to be consistent, the Bianchi identities must continue to hold. This is nontrivial because it means that the ground state expectation value of the stress-energy tensor must be covariantly conserved in spite of the fact that the ground state is generally a different state at different times. We prove that this consistency condition does hold. As a consequence, we find that the vacuum stress-energy which is above the instantaneous ground state does not renormalize the cosmological constant, as long as the instantaneous ground states and the instantaneous adiabatic vacua exist.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2001.04993,
  title  = {Which part of the stress-energy tensor gravitates?},
  author = {Yigit Yargic and Laura Sberna and Achim Kempf},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.04993},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

15 pages, 1 figure. Accepted to PRD