The energy-momentum tensor for an effective initial state and the renormalization of gravity

Abstract

We renormalize the divergences in the energy-momentum tensor of a scalar field that begins its evolution in an effective initial state. The effective initial state is a formalism that encodes the signatures of new physics in the structure of the quantum state of a field; in an inflationary setting, these signatures could include trans-Planckian effects. We treat both the scalar field and gravity equivalently, considering each as a small quantum fluctuation about a spatially independent background. The classical gravitational equations of motion then arise as a tadpole condition on the graviton. The contribution of the scalar field to these equations contains divergences associated with the structure of the effective state. However, these divergences occur only at the initial time, where the state was defined, and they accompany terms depending solely upon the classical gravitational background. We define the renormalization prescription that adds the appropriate counterterms at the initial-time boundary to cancel these divergences, and illustrate it with several examples evaluated at one-loop order.