Conservation Law and Trace Anomaly for the Stress-Energy Tensor of a Self-interacting Scalar Field
摘要
We consider a self-interacting, massive, real scalar field on a four-dimensional globally hyperbolic spacetime and the associated stress-energy tensor. Using techniques proper of the algebraic approach to perturbative quantum field theory, we study the associated, Wick-ordered, quantum observable. In particular, we generalize a construction, first developed in the free field theory scenario by Moretti in (Commun Math Phys 232: 189–221, 2003. arXiv:gr-qc/0109048 [gr-qc]), aimed at exploiting the existing freedoms in the definition of the classical stress-energy tensor, in order to define a quantum counterpart which is divergence free. We focus on Minkowski spacetime proving that this procedure can be adapted also to cubic or quartic self-interactions, at least up to order