Back-Reaction on the Topological Degrees of Freedom in (2+1)-Dimensional Spacetime

Abstract

We investigate the back-reaction effect of the quantum field on the topological degrees of freedom in (2+1)-dimensional toroidal universe, ${\cal M} \simeq T^2\times {\bf R}$. Constructing a homogeneous model of the toroidal universe, we examine explicitly the back-reaction effect of the Casimir energy of a massless, conformally coupled scalar field, with a conformal vacuum. The back-reaction causes an instability of the universe: The torus becomes thinner and thinner as it evolves, while its total 2-volume (area) becomes smaller and smaller. The back-reaction caused by the Casimir energy can be compared with the influence of the negative cosmological constant: Both of them make the system unstable and the torus becomes thinner and thinner in shape. On the other hand, the Casimir energy is a complicated function of the Teichmüller parameters $(τ^1, τ^2)$ causing highly non-trivial dynamical evolutions, while the cosmological constant is simply a constant. Since the spatial section is a 2-torus, we shall write down the partition function of this system, fixing the path-integral measure for gravity modes, with the help of the techniques developed in string theories. We show explicitly that the partition function expressed in terms of the canonical variables corresponding to the (redundantly large) original phase space, is reduced to the partition function defined in terms of the physical-phase-space variables with a standard Liouville measure. This result is compatible with the general theory of the path integral for the 1st-class constrained systems.