Massive spinor fields in flat spacetimes with non-trivial topology

Abstract

The vacuum expectation value of the stress-energy tensor is calculated for spin $\frac{1}{2}$ massive fields in several multiply connected flat spacetimes. We examine the physical effects of topology on manifolds such as $R^3\times S^1$, $R^2\times T^2$, $R^1\times T^3$, the Mobius strip and the Klein bottle. We find that the spinor vacuum stress tensor has the opposite sign to, and twice the magnitude of, the scalar tensor in orientable manifolds. Extending the above considerations to the case of Misner spacetime, we calculate the vacuum expectation value of spinor stress-energy tensor in this space and discuss its implications for the chronology protection conjecture.

18 pages, Some of the equations in section VI as well as typographical errors corrected, 5 figures, Revtex4

References in corpus (5)

• Cosmic Strings and Chronology Protection
• Quantum Field Theory in Spaces with Closed Time-Like Curves
• Casimir energy of a massive field in a genus-1 surface
• Chronology Protection and Quantized Fields: Complex Automorphic Scalar Field in Misner Space
• Massive scalar field in multiply connected flat spacetimes

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Quantum fields in toroidal topology
• Phase transition in the massive Gross-Neveu model in toroidal topologies
• Stress tensor for massive fields on flat spaces of spatial topology R^2\times{S^1}
• Topology, Mass and Casimir energy
• Quantum forces in cavities
• Thermal Casimir effect for a Dirac field on flat space with a nontrivial circular boundary condition