Vacuum polarization in the background of conical singularity

Abstract

We consider the gravity-induced effects associated with a massless scalar field living in a higher-dimensional spacetime being the tensor product of Minkowski space and spherically-symmetric space with angle deficit. These spacetimes are considered as simple models for a multidimensional global monopole or cosmic string with flat extra dimensions, where the deficit of solid angle is proportional to Newton constant and tension. Thus, we refer to them as conical backgrounds. In terms of the angular deficit value, we derive the perturbative expression for the scalar Green’s function and compute it to the leading order. With the use of this Green’s function we compute the renormalized vacuum expectation value of the scalar-field’s energy-momentum tensor. We make some general note on the linear-on-curvature part of the trace of even coefficients of Schwinger-deWitt expansion.