Causality and micro-causality in curved spacetime
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Abstract: We consider how causality and micro-causality are realised in QED in curved spacetime. The photon propagator is found to exhibit novel non-analytic behaviour due to vacuum polarization, which invalidates the Kramers-Kronig dispersion relation and calls into question the validity of micro-causality in curved spacetime. This non-analyticity is ultimately related to the generic focusing nature of congruences of geodesics in curved spacetime, as implied by the null energy condition, and the existence of conjugate points. These results arise from a calculation of the complete non-perturbative frequency dependence of the vacuum polarization tensor in QED, using novel world-line path integral methods together with the Penrose plane-wave limit of spacetime in the neighbourhood of a null geodesic. The refractive index of curved spacetime is shown to exhibit superluminal phase velocities, dispersion, absorption (due to gamma o e^+e^-) and bi-refringence, but we demonstrate that the wavefront velocity (the high-frequency limit of the phase velocity) is indeed c, thereby guaranteeing that causality itself is respected.
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Cited in
(16)- Gravitational causality and the self-stress of photons
- Amplitude's positivity vs. subluminality: causality and unitarity constraints on dimension 6 \& 8 gluonic operators in the SMEFT
- The unbearable beingness of light: dressing and undressing photons in black hole spacetimes
- Initial value problem in string-inspired nonlocal field theory
- Superluminality, black holes and EFT
- The causal structure of QED in curved spacetime: analyticity and the refractive index
- Graviton propagation and vacuum polarization in curved space
- The effect of gravitational tidal forces on renormalized quantum fields
- The Maslov index and some applications to dispersion relations in curved space times
- Massive gravity
- The refractive index of curved spacetime: The fate of causality in QED
- Decoherence and CPT violation in a stringy model of space-time foam
- Causality of 3D extended gravity theories
- String quantum gravity, Lorentz-invariance violation and gamma ray astronomy
- Softness and amplitudes' positivity for spinning particles
- A cautionary case of casual causality
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