Scaling behavior of semiclassical gravity

Abstract

Using the idea of metric scaling we examine the scaling behavior of the stress tensor of a scalar quantum field in curved space-time. The renormalization of the stress tensor results in a departure from naive scaling. We view the process of renormalizing the stress tensor as being equivalent to renormalizing the coupling constants in the Lagrangian for gravity (with terms quadratic in the curvature included). Thus the scaling of the stress tensor is interpreted as a nonnaive scaling of these coupling constants. In particular, we find that the cosmological constant and the gravitational constant approach UV fixed points. The constants associated with the terms which are quadratic in the curvature logarithmically diverge. This suggests that quantum gravity is asymptotically scale invariant.