Properties of the wormhole calculus

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
We adapt the rules, used by Coleman in the context of Euclidean gravity to show that the cosmological constant vanishes, to the simpler case of a scalar field theory. We compute one- and two-point functions in a variety of examples and in various approximations. We discover cases where wormholes make first-order phase transitions disappear, but permit second-order transitions. We find a peculiar propagator for a scalar field coupled quadratically to wormholes in the Hartree-Fock approximation. We discuss various ways to deal with the divergences caused by arbitrarily large numbers of subuniverses.