{"paper":{"title":"Gravitational Vacuum Polarization: Decoupling and the Conformal Anomaly","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["gr-qc"],"primary_cat":"hep-th","authors_text":"Emil Mottola","submitted_at":"2026-07-20T17:16:44Z","abstract_excerpt":"A compact form of the stress tensor $\\langle T^{ab}T^{cd}\\rangle$ correlation function of a quantum scalar field of arbitrary mass $m$ and curvature coupling $\\xi$ is presented, with particular emphasis on decoupling in the $m\\to\\infty$ limit and infrared origin of the conformal anomaly as $m \\to 0$. The Ward Identity (WI) of covariant conservation is verified for the full second order metric variation of the one-loop effective action, of which $\\langle T^{ab}T^{cd}\\rangle$ is part, including local contact terms. This WI is satisfied by two tensors, one spin-2 (traceless) and the second spin-0"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2607.18180","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2607.18180/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}