Induced vacuum energy-momentum tensor in the background of a cosmic string

Abstract

A massive scalar field is quantized in the background of a cosmic string which is generalized to a static flux-carrying codimension-2 brane in the locally flat multidimensional space-time. We find that the finite energy-momentum tensor is induced in the vacuum. The dependence of the tensor components on the brane flux and tension, as well as on the coupling to the space-time curvature scalar, is comprehensively analyzed. The tensor components are holomorphic functions of space dimension, decreasing exponentially with the distance from the brane. The case of the massless quantized scalar field is also considered, and the relevance of Bernoulli's polynomials of even order for this case is discussed.