Abstract
We show that creation of field quanta can occur even in conformally trivial situations, contrary to popular belief. This conformal-symmetry breaking owes its existence to the so-called conformal anomaly in the field stress tensor which, in the case of interacting fields in curved spacetime, contains state-dependent, nongeometrical, and other terms which are associated with particle generation. The effect is explicitly demonstrated for massless 4 theory in a Robertson-Walker spacetime.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 322-329 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Physical Review D |
Volume | 22 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1980 |
Externally published | Yes |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)