Effects of stress tensor fluctuations upon focusing
- 21 September 2004
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review D
- Vol. 70 (6), 064032
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.70.064032
Abstract
We treat the gravitational effects of quantum stress tensor fluctuations. An operational approach is adopted in which these fluctuations produce fluctuations in the focusing of a bundle of geodesics. This can be calculated explicitly using the Raychaudhuri equation as a Langevin equation. The physical manifestation of these fluctuations are angular blurring and luminosity fluctuations of the images of distant sources. We give explicit results for the case of a scalar field on a flat background in a thermal state.Keywords
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