Quantum Fields without Wick Rotation

Symmetry

Roberto Percacci¹  Alessio Baldazzi¹  Vedran Skrinjar¹ 

[1] International School for Advanced Studies, via Bonomea 265, I-34136 Trieste, Italy;

关键词: Quantum Field Theory;    Wick rotation;    heat kernel;    zeta function;   

DOI  :  10.3390/sym11030373

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

We discuss the calculation of one-loop effective actions in Lorentzian spacetimes, based on a very simple application of the method of steepest descent to the integral over the field. We show that for static spacetimes this procedure agrees with the analytic continuation of Euclidean calculations. We also discuss how to calculate the effective action by integrating a renormalization group equation. We show that the result is independent of arbitrary choices in the definition of the coarse-graining and we see again that the Lorentzian and Euclidean calculations agree. When applied to quantum gravity on static backgrounds, our procedure is equivalent to analytically continuing time and the integral over the conformal factor.

【 授权许可】

Unknown