Comment on ‘Wedges, cones, cosmic strings and their vacuum energy’

Abstract

A recent paper (Fulling et al 2012 J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 45 374018) is extended by investigating the behavior of the regularized quantum scalar stress tensor near the axes of cones and their covering manifold, the Dowker space. A cone is parametrized by its angle θ1, where θ1 = 2π for flat space. We find that the tensor components have singularities of the type rγ, but the generic leading γ equals , which is negative if and only if θ1 > 2π, and is a positive integer if . Thus the functions are analytic in those cases that can be solved by the method of images starting from flat space, and they are not divergent in the cases that interpolate between those. As a wedge of angle α can be solved by images starting from a cone of angle 2α, a divergent stress can arise in a wedge with π < α ⩽ 2π but not in a smaller one.