Effective actions on the squashed three-sphere

Abstract

The effective actions of a scalar and massless spin-half field are determined as functions of the deformation of a symmetrically squashed three-sphere. The extreme oblate case is particularly examined as pertinant to a high temperature statistical mechanical interpretation that may be relevant for the holographic principle. Interpreting the squashing parameter as a temperature, we find that the effective `free energies' on the three-sphere are mixtures of thermal two-sphere scalars and spinors which, in the case of the spinor on the three-sphere, have the `wrong' thermal periodicities. However the free energies do have the same leading high temperature forms as the standard free energies on the two-sphere. The next few terms in the high-temperature expansion are also explicitly calculated and briefly compared with the Taub-Bolt-AdS bulk result.