To B or not to B: primordial magnetic fields from Weyl anomaly

DOI10.1007/JHEP11(2018)039zbMATH Open1404.83112arXiv1808.08237WikidataQ128965306 ScholiaQ128965306MaRDI QIDQ1635142FDOQ1635142

Authors: André Benevides, Atish Dabholkar, Takeshi Kobayashi 

Publication date: 18 December 2018

Published in: Journal of High Energy Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: The quantum effective action for the electromagnetic field in an expanding universe has an anomalous dependence on the scale factor of the metric arising from virtual charged particles in the loops. It has been argued that this Weyl anomaly of quantum electrodynamics sources cosmological magnetic fields in the early universe. We examine this long-standing claim by using the effective action beyond the weak gravitational field limit which has recently been determined. We introduce a general criteria for assessing the quantumness of field fluctuations, and show that the Weyl anomaly is not able to convert vacuum fluctuations of the gauge field into classical fluctuations. We conclude that there is no production of coherent magnetic fields in the universe from the Weyl anomaly of quantum electrodynamics, irrespective of the number of massless charged particles in the theory.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.08237

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zbMATH Keywords

anomalies in field and string theorieseffective field theoriesmodels of quantum gravity

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Anomalies in quantum field theory (81T50) Electromagnetic interaction; quantum electrodynamics (81V10) Einstein-Maxwell equations (83C22) Quantization of the gravitational field (83C45) String and superstring theories in gravitational theory (83E30) Astrophysical cosmology (85A40)

Cites Work

• Conformal invariance and asymptotic freedom in quantum gravity
• A quartic conformally covariant differential operator for arbitrary pseudo-Riemannian manifolds (Summary)
• A nonlocal action for the trace anomaly
• The one-loop effective action and trace anomaly in four dimensions
• The basis of nonlocal curvature invariants in quantum gravity theory. Third order
• Covariant non-local action for massless QED and the curvature expansion
• A model with cosmological Bell inequalities
• Nonlocal quantum effective actions in Weyl-flat spacetimes

Cited In (2)

• One-loop electromagnetic correlators of SQED in power-law inflation
• Chiral gravitational waves produced in a helical magnetogenesis model

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