R -summed form of adiabatic expansions in curved spacetime

Abstract

The Feynman propagator in curved spacetime admits an asymptotic (Schwinger-DeWitt) series expansion in derivatives of the metric. Remarkably, all terms in the series containing the Ricci scalar R can be summed exactly. We show that this (nonperturbative) property of the Schwinger-DeWitt series has a natural and equivalent counterpart in the adiabatic (Parker-Fulling) series expansion of the scalar modes in an homogeneous cosmological spacetime. The equivalence between both R-summed adiabatic expansions can be further extended when a background scalar field is also present.