Gravitons and Lightcone Fluctuations
Preprint
- 31 October 1994
Abstract
Gravitons in a squeezed vacuum state, the natural result of quantum creation in the early universe or by black holes, will introduce metric fluctuations. These metric fluctuations will introduce fluctuations of the lightcone. It is shown that when the various two-point functions of a quantized field are averaged over the metric fluctuations, the lightcone singularity disappears for distinct points. The metric averaged functions remain singular in the limit of coincident points. The metric averaged retarded Green's function for a massless field becomes a Gaussian which is nonzero both inside and outside of the classical lightcone. This implies some photons propagate faster than the classical light speed, whereas others propagate slower. The possible effects of metric fluctuations upon one-loop quantum processes are discussed and illustrated by the calculation of the one-loop electron self-energy.Keywords
All Related Versions
- Version 1, 1994-10-31, ArXiv
- Published version: Physical Review D, 51 (4), 1692.
This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: