Quantum vacuum cosmology

✍ Scribed by Janet E. Jones

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1976
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 769 KB
• Volume: 101
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-4916
• DOI: 10.1016/0003-4916(76)90016-6

✦ Synopsis

It is shown for the case of a conformally flat vacuum that the curvature of space-time may be viewed as the observable consequence of particle interactions involving a scalar field 4, rather than the independent agency of the gravitational field by itself. The quantum nature of gravity comes in as a consequence of the quantum properties of the &field ("vacuum fluctuations"), and a direct analogy is drawn between the renormalizations of charge and mass. Cosmological solutions are derived: These being just the conventional Friedmann solutions, or the de Sitter solution. It is pointed out that a totally empty universe must be Minkowskian.