Stochastic quantization of a self-interacting nonminimal scalar field in semiclassical gravity

Abstract

We employ stochastic quantization for a self-interacting nonminimal massive scalar field in curved spacetime. The covariant background field method and local momentum space representation are used to obtain the Euclidean correlation function and evaluate multi-loop quantum corrections through simultaneous expansions in the curvature tensor and its covariant derivatives and in the noise fields. The stochastic correlation function for a quartic self-interaction reproduces the well-known one-loop result by Bunch and Parker and is used to construct the effective potential in curved spacetime in an arbitrary dimension D up to the first order in curvature. Furthermore, we present a sample of numerical simulations for D=3 in the first order in curvature. We consider the model with spontaneous symmetry breaking and obtain fully nonperturbative solutions for the vacuum expectation value of the scalar field and compare them with one- and two-loop solutions.