https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-013-2688-z
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Fermionic vacuum polarization in compactified cosmic string spacetime
1
INFN, Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, Via Enrico Fermi 40, 00044, Frascati, Italy
2
Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Caixa Postal 5.008, 58.059-970, João Pessoa, PB, Brazil
3
Department of Physics, Yerevan State University, 1 Alex Manoogian Street, 0025, Yerevan, Armenia
* e-mail: emello@fisica.ufpb.br
Received:
25
November
2013
Accepted:
2
December
2013
Published online:
23
January
2014
We investigate the fermionic condensate and the vacuum expectation value (VEV) of the energy-momentum tensor for a charged massive fermionic field in the geometry of a cosmic string compactified along its axis. In addition, we assume the presence of two types of magnetic fluxes: a flux running along the cosmic string and another enclosed by the compact dimension. These fluxes give rise to Aharanov–Bohm-like effects on the VEVs. The VEVs are decomposed into two parts corresponding to the geometry of a straight cosmic string without compactification plus a topological part induced by the compactification of the string axis. Both contributions are even periodic functions of the magnetic fluxes with period equal to the flux quantum. The vacuum energy density is equal to the radial stress for the parts corresponding to the straight cosmic string and the topological one. Moreover, the axial stress is equal to the energy density for the parts corresponding to the straight cosmic string; however, for massive fermionic fields this does not occur for the topological contributions. With respect to the dependence on the magnetic fluxes, both the fermionic condensate and the vacuum energy density, can be either positive or negative. Moreover, for points near the string, the main contribution to the VEVs comes from the straight cosmic string part, whereas at large distances the topological ones dominate. In addition to the local characteristics of the vacuum state, we also evaluate the part in the topological Casimir energy induced by the string.
© The Author(s), 2014
