Jul 5 – 10, 2021
Europe/Rome timezone

Why quantum field theory in curved space--time is very far from being well understood

Jul 6, 2021, 10:45 AM
20m
Invited talk in the parallel session Strong Electromagnetic and Gravitational Field Physics: From Laboratories to Early Universe Strong Electromagnetic and Gravitational Field Physics: From Laboratories to Early Universe

Speaker

Prof. Emil Akhmedov (MIPT and ITEP)

Description

We discuss equilibration process in expanding universes as opposed to the thermalization one in Minkowski space--time. The goal is to answer the question: Does the equilibrium reached before the rapid expansion stops and has negligible effect on the background geometry? Or stress--energy fluxes in a universe of GUT scale curvature have strong effects on the expansion rate and the equilibrium is reached only after the drastic decrease of the space--time curvature? We discuss the notion of observables in highly curved space--times. We argue that consideration of more generic non--invariant Hadamard states in theories with invariant actions is a necessary ingredient to understand quantum field dynamics in strongly curved backgrounds. The reason for the consideration of such states is the presence of secular memory effects in generic time dependent backgrounds, which are totally absent in equilibrium.

Primary author

Prof. Emil Akhmedov (MIPT and ITEP)

Presentation materials

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