Stress-energy tensor in colliding plane wave space-times: An approximation procedure

Abstract

In a recent work on the quantization of a massless scalar field in a particular colliding plane wave space-time, we computed the vacuum expectation value of the stress-energy tensor on the physical state which corresponds to the Minkowski vacuum before the collision of the waves. We did such a calculation in a region close to both the Killing-Cauchy horizon and the folding singularities that such a space-time contains. In the present paper, we give a suitable approximation procedure to compute this expectation value, in the conformal coupling case, throughout the causal past of the center of the collision. This will allow us to approximately study the evolution of such an expectation value from the beginning of the collision until the formation of the Killing-Cauchy horizon. We start with a null expectation value before the arrival of the waves, which then acquires non-zero values at the beginning of the collision and grows unbounded towards the Killing-Cauchy horizon. The value near the horizon is compatible with our previous result, which means that such an approximation may be applied to other colliding plane wave space-times. Even with this approximation, the initial modes propagated into the interaction region contain a function which cannot be calculated exactly and to ensure the correct regularization of the stress-energy tensor with the point-splitting technique, this function must be given up to adiabatic order four of approximation.