Semiclassical gravity with a conformally covariant field in globally hyperbolic spacetimes

Abstract

We prove that semiclassical gravity in conformally static, globally hyperbolic spacetimes with a massless, conformally coupled Klein-Gordon field is well posed, when viewed as a coupled theory for the dynamical conformal factor of the metric and the Klein-Gordon theory. Namely, it admits unique and stable solutions whenever constrained fourth-order initial data for the conformal factor and suitably defined Hadamard initial data for the Klein-Gordon state are provided on a spacelike Cauchy surface. As no spacetime symmetries are imposed on the conformal factor, the present result implies that, provided constrained initial data exists, there also exist exact solutions to the semiclassical gravity equations beyond the isotropic, homogeneous or static cases.