Quantum energy inequalities in two dimensions

Abstract

Quantumenergy inequalities (QEIs) were established by Flanagan for the massless scalarfield on two-dimensional Lorentzian spacetimes globally conformal to Minkowskispace. We extend his result to all two-dimensional globally hyperbolic Lorentzianspacetimes and use it to show that flat spacetime QEIs give a good approximationto the curved spacetime results on sampling time scales short in comparisonwith natural geometric scales. This is relevant to the application of QEIsto constrain exotic spacetime metrics.