Conformal Anomalies for Interacting Scalar Fields on Curved Manifolds with Boundary

Abstract

The trace anomaly for a conformally invariant scalar field theory on a curved manifold of positive constant curvature with boundary is considered. In the context of a perturbative evaluation of the theory's effective action explicit calculations are given for those contributions to the conformal anomaly which emerge as a result of free scalar propagation as well as from scalar self-interactions up to second order in the scalar self-coupling. The renormalisation-group behaviour of the theory is, subsequently, exploited in order to advance the evaluation of the conformal anomaly to third order in the scalar self-coupling. In effect, complete contributions to the theory's conformal anomaly are evaluated up to fourth-loop order.

36 pages, 1 figure. Contains an additional section on Quntum Cosmology. To appear in International Journal of Modern Physics A