Joint cosmology seminar at Tufts:

Tuesday, May 16, 2023, 2:30 pm
574 Boston Ave, Room 206\\
Tufts University
Refreshments at 2:00 outside the building, at the corner of Harvard St. and Boston Ave.

Non-minimal coupling and negative null energies

Eleni Kontou
King's College London

Abstract:

Even classical non-minimally coupled scalar fields can violate energy conditions such as the NEC. In the context of QFT, non-minimally coupled scalars can obey lower bounds, known as quantum energy inequalities, but these are always state dependent. In this talk I will discuss classical and quantum bounds on the null energy and consider possible violations. Further, I will examine the conformal transformation between Jordan and Einstein frames both classically and secmiclassically. Finally, I will comment on extensions of this work on self-interacting fields.