Instability of fermionic, vectorial, and tensorial fields in curved spacetimes
| Grant number: | 12/20039-6 |
| Support type: | Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctorate |
| Effective date (Start): | February 01, 2013 |
| Effective date (End): | January 31, 2015 |
| Field of knowledge: | Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Physics |
| Principal Investigator: | Daniel Augusto Turolla Vanzella |
| Grantee: | Raphael Santarelli |
| Home Institution: | Instituto de Física de São Carlos (IFSC). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Carlos , SP, Brazil |
Abstract Using the so-called Quantum Field Theory in Curved Spacetimes (QFTCS), Vanzella and Lima discovered a new effect called ``vacuum awakening", in which the vacuum energy density of a free quantum field in a well-behaved spacetime is forced, by the same background spacetime, to become dominant over any classical component. Hence, this quantum field can be amplified, and it would affect the structure and dynamics of relativistic stars. Subsequent studies associated this semiclassical instability to the ``spontaneous scalarization", a well-known effect of scalar-tensor theories (ST), showing that when the coupling constant is negative, the required parameters to awake the vacuum and to the spontaneous scalarization are the same. When the coupling constant is positive we do not have the spontaneous scalarization effect, but we still have the presence of semiclassical instability, so that the final state of this instability is unknown. Our goal is to make a systematic study of the vacuum-awakening effect and its relation to the spontaneous scalarization, from the dynamics of the system of equations to the stability of the final configurations, as well as investigate possible scenarios for the case where the coupling constant is positive. (AU) | |