Würzburg 2018 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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GR: Fachverband Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie

GR 15: Quantum Gravity II

GR 15.4: Vortrag

Freitag, 23. März 2018, 09:45–10:00, NW-Bau - HS3

Quantum properties of f(R) gravity — •Michael Ruf and Christian Steinwachs — Physikalisches Institut, Albert-Ludwigs Universität Freiburg, Hermann-Herder-Str. 3, 79104 Freiburg, Germany

We present the one-loop counterterms in f(R) gravity for an arbitrary background manifold. This extends previous results in f(R) gravity, which were limited to spaces of constant curvature. The calculation can be most efficiently performed by a combined use of the background field method and the heat kernel approach. Compared to similar calculations in higher derivative theories of gravity, the main technical difficulty of f(R) theory is related to the special degenerate structure of the principal symbol of the fluctuation operator, which prevents the straightforward application of standard techniques. We discuss a new method which allows to reduce the problem to the evaluation of known functional traces. Our result has important applications in cosmology and black hole physics and allows to study the quantum equivalence between f(R) gravity and its reformulation as a scalar-tensor theory.