Effective potentials for de Sitter and anti de Sitter quantum fields
Abstract
We derive a systematic treatment of one-loop effective potentials for interacting scalar fields in curved spacetimes, providing a general formula valid in arbitrary geometries and explicit results for de Sitter and anti-de Sitter backgrounds. We then compute the effective potential for a scalar theory on a de Sitter space in any integer dimension. In and dimensional regularization, we extend the calculation up to two loops and compute the -function and the anomalous mass dimension. They coincide exactly with flat-space results, despite dramatic curvature modifications to physical masses/couplings. The flat limit recovers Coleman-Weinberg, confirming consistency. Working in dimensions, we repeat the calculation for by using point-splitting regularization, obtaining analogous results for the -function and anomalous mass dimension.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2603.02140,
title = {Effective potentials for de Sitter and anti de Sitter quantum fields},
author = {Alfio Bonanno and Sergio Luigi Cacciatori and Ugo Moschella},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.02140},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
25 pages, Dedicated to Jean Pierre Gazeau on his LXXX Birthday