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Ferreiro, A., Navarro-Salas, J., & Pla, S. (2020). R-summed form of adiabatic expansions in curved spacetime. Phys. Rev. D, 101(10), 105011–12pp.
Abstract: The Feynman propagator in curved spacetime admits an asymptotic (Schwinger-DeWitt) series expansion in derivatives of the metric. Remarkably, all terms in the series containing the Ricci scalar R can be summed exactly. We show that this (nonperturbative) property of the Schwinger-DeWitt series has a natural and equivalent counterpart in the adiabatic (Parker-Fulling) series expansion of the scalar modes in an homogeneous cosmological spacetime. The equivalence between both R-summed adiabatic expansions can be further extended when a background scalar field is also present.
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del Rio, A., Sanchis-Gual, N., Mewes, V., Agullo, I., Font, J. A., & Navarro-Salas, J. (2020). Spontaneous Creation of Circularly Polarized Photons in Chiral Astrophysical Systems. Phys. Rev. Lett., 124(21), 211301–6pp.
Abstract: This work establishes a relation between chiral anomalies in curved spacetimes and the radiative content of the gravitational field. In particular, we show that a flux of circularly polarized gravitational waves triggers the spontaneous creation of photons with net circular polarization from the quantum vacuum. Using waveform catalogs, we identify precessing binary black holes as astrophysical configurations that emit such gravitational radiation and then solve the fully nonlinear Einstein's equations with numerical relativity to evaluate the net effect. The quantum amplitude for a merger is comparable to the Hawking emission rate of the final black hole and small to be directly observed. However, the implications for the inspiral of binary neutron stars could be more prominent, as argued on symmetry grounds.
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Beltran-Palau, P., Navarro-Salas, J., & Pla, S. (2020). Adiabatic regularization for Dirac fields in time-varying electric backgrounds. Phys. Rev. D, 101(10), 105014–15pp.
Abstract: The adiabatic regularization method was originally proposed by Parker and Fulling to renormalize the energy-momentum tensor of scalar fields in expanding universes. It can be extended to renormalize the electric current induced by quantized scalar fields in a time-varying electric background. This can be done in a way consistent with gravity if the vector potential is considered as a variable of adiabatic order one. Assuming this, we further extend the method to deal with Dirac fields in four space-time dimensions. This requires a self-consistent ansatz for the adiabatic expansion, in presence of a prescribed time-dependent electric field, which is different from the conventional expansion used for scalar fields. Our proposal is consistent, in the massless limit, with the conformal anomaly. We also provide evidence that our proposed adiabatic expansion for the fermionic modes parallels the Schwinger-DeWitt adiabatic expansion of the two-point function. We give the renormalized expression of the electric current and analyze, using numerical and analytical tools, the pair production induced by a Sauter-type electric pulse. We also analyze the scaling properties of the current for a large field strength.
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Bernabeu, J., & Navarro-Salas, J. (2019). A Non-Local Action for Electrodynamics: Duality Symmetry and the Aharonov-Bohm Effect, Revisited. Symmetry-Basel, 11(10), 1191–13pp.
Abstract: A non-local action functional for electrodynamics depending on the electric and magnetic fields, instead of potentials, has been proposed in the literature. In this work we elaborate and improve this proposal. We also use this formalism to confront the electric-magnetic duality symmetry of the electromagnetic field and the Aharonov-Bohm effect, two subtle aspects of electrodynamics that we examine in a novel way. We show how the former can be derived from the simple harmonic oscillator character of vacuum electrodynamics, while also demonstrating how the magnetic version of the latter naturally arises in an explicitly non-local manner.
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Beltran-Palau, P., Ferreiro, A., Navarro-Salas, J., & Pla, S. (2019). Breaking of adiabatic invariance in the creation of particles by electromagnetic backgrounds. Phys. Rev. D, 100(8), 085014–12pp.
Abstract: Particles are spontaneously created from the vacuum by time-varying gravitational or electromagnetic backgrounds. It has been proven that the particle number operator in an expanding universe is an adiabatic invariant. In this paper we show that, in some special cases, the expected adiabatic invariance of the particle number fails in presence of electromagnetic backgrounds. In order to do this, we consider as a prototype a Sauter-type electric pulse. Furthermore, we also show a close relation between the breaking of the adiabatic invariance and the emergence of the axial anomaly.
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Beltran-Palau, P., Navarro-Salas, J., & Pla, S. (2019). Translational anomaly of chiral fermions in two dimensions. Phys. Rev. D, 99(10), 105008–5pp.
Abstract: It is well known that a quantized two-dimensional Weyl fermion coupled to gravity spoils general covariance and breaks the covariant conservation of the energy-momentum tensor. In this brief article, we point out that the quantum conservation of the momentum can also fail in flat spacetime, provided the Weyl fermion is coupled to a time-varying homogeneous electric field. This signals a quantum anomaly of the space-translation symmetry, which has not been highlighted in the literature so far.
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Ferreiro, A., & Navarro-Salas, J. (2019). Running couplings from adiabatic regularization. Phys. Lett. B, 792, 81–85.
Abstract: We extend the adiabatic regularization method by introducing an arbitrary mass scale μin the construction of the subtraction terms. This allows us to obtain, in a very robust way, the running of the coupling constants by demanding mu-invariance of the effective semiclassical (Maxwell-Einstein) equations. In particular, we get the running of the electric charge of perturbative quantum electrodynamics. Furthermore, the method brings about a renormalization of the cosmological constant and the Newtonian gravitational constant. The running obtained for these dimensionful coupling constants has new relevant (non-logarithmic) contributions, not predicted by dimensional regularization.
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Agullo, I., del Rio, A., & Navarro-Salas, J. (2018). Classical and quantum aspects of electric-magnetic duality rotations in curved spacetimes. Phys. Rev. D, 98(12), 125001–22pp.
Abstract: It is well known that the source-free Maxwell equations are invariant under electric-magnetic duality rotations, F -> F cos theta +*F sin theta. These transformations are indeed a symmetry of the theory in the Noether sense. The associated constant of motion is the difference in the intensity between self-dual and anti-self-dual components of the electromagnetic field or, equivalently, the difference between the right and left circularly polarized components. This conservation law holds even if the electromagnetic field interacts with an arbitrary classical gravitational background. After reexamining these results, we discuss whether this symmetry is maintained when the electromagnetic field is quantized. The answer is in the affirmative in the absence of gravity but not necessarily otherwise. As a consequence, the net polarization of the quantum electromagnetic field fails to be conserved in curved spacetimes. This is a quantum effect, and it can be understood as the generalization of the fermion chiral anomaly to fields of spin one.
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del Rio, A., & Navarro-Salas, J. (2014). Spacetime correlators of perturbations in slow-roll de Sitter inflation. Phys. Rev. D, 89(8), 084037–7pp.
Abstract: Two-point correlators and self-correlators of primordial perturbations in quasi-de Sitter spacetime backgrounds are considered. For large separations two-point correlators exhibit nearly scale invariance, while for short distances self-correlators need standard renormalization. We study the deformation of two-point correlators to smoothly match the self-correlators at coincidence. The corresponding angular power spectrum is evaluated in the Sachs-Wolfe regime of low multipoles. Scale invariance is maintained, but the amplitude of C(l)could change in a nontrivial way.
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Landete, A., Navarro-Salas, J., & Torrenti, F. (2014). Adiabatic regularization and particle creation for spin one-half fields. Phys. Rev. D, 89(4), 044030–13pp.
Abstract: The extension of the adiabatic regularization method to spin-1/2 fields requires a self-consistent adiabatic expansion of the field modes. We provide here the details of such expansion, which differs from the WKB ansatz that works well for scalars, to firmly establish the generalization of the adiabatic renormalization scheme to spin-1/2 fields. We focus on the computation of particle production in de Sitter spacetime and obtain an analytic expression of the renormalized stress-energy tensor for Dirac fermions.
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