English

Quantum field theory on a growing lattice

High Energy Physics - Theory 2009-11-10 v2 Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology Quantum Physics

Abstract

We construct the classical and canonically quantized theories of a massless scalar field on a background lattice in which the number of points--and hence the number of modes--may grow in time. To obtain a well-defined theory certain restrictions must be imposed on the lattice. Growth-induced particle creation is studied in a two-dimensional example. The results suggest that local mode birth of this sort injects too much energy into the vacuum to be a viable model of cosmological mode birth.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/0407019,
  title  = {Quantum field theory on a growing lattice},
  author = {Brendan Z. Foster and Ted Jacobson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/0407019},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

28 pages, 2 figures; v.2: added comments on defining energy, and references

R2 v1 2026-07-22T15:24:21.278Z