Gravitons in One-Loop Quantum Cosmology: Correspondence Between Covariant and Non-Covariant Formalisms

Abstract

The discrepancy between the results of covariant and non-covariant one-loop calculations for higher-spin fields in quantum cosmology is analyzed. A detailed mode-by-mode study of perturbative quantum gravity about a flat Euclidean background bounded by two concentric 3-spheres, including non-physical degrees of freedom and ghost modes, leads to one-loop amplitudes in agreement with the covariant Schwinger-DeWitt method. This calculation provides the generalization of a previous analysis of fermionic fields and electromagnetic fields at one-loop about flat Euclidean backgrounds admitting a well-defined 3+1 decomposition.

29 pages, latex, recently appearing in Physical Review D, volume 50, pages 6329-6337, November 1994. The authors apologize for the delay in circulating the paper, due to technical problems now fixed