An effective stochastic semiclassical theory for the gravitational field (Q1972097): Difference between revisions

The paper is devoted to the problems of semiclassical theory of gravity, when the gravitational field is treated classically, but the matter fields are quantum. The authors proposed the conceptual unification of two approaches. The first one is a path-integral technique designed to obtain the expectation value of field operators in a direct way. In the semiclassical regime a tree-level approximation is performed in the path integrals involving the system variables. The second approach is based on the description of the transition from quantum to classical behaviour in the framework of the consistent histories formulation of a quantum theory. Firstly (Sec. 2) a short introduction to CTP (closed time path) functional technique applied to a system-environmental interaction and its relation to the influence functional formalism of Feynman and Vernon is presented. Then the semiclassical equation for the system variables is derived. The solution of this equation is interpreted as representing the expectation value of the Heisenberg-picture coordinate operator \(\widehat{q}(t)\). In order to reformulate the mechanism for decoherences the coarse-grained system operators are introduced. Under assumptions that the above described mechanism for approximate decoherence works, and the corresponding coarse-grained system variables can be approximated in terms of a set of random variables, the effective equation of motion is obtained. Using the developed technique the authors show a quick way to get the Langevin equation from that derived in the paper. The main part of the article (Sec. 3) contains the formulation of the effective equations of motion for the gravitational field in the semiclassical regime. In particular, the semiclassical Einstein equation and Einstein-Langevin equation are proposed. The paper concludes with a discussion containing the description of the physical meaning of the proposed method and the obtained equations.