Vacuum Quantum Stress Tensor Fluctuations: A Diagonalization Approach

Understand

Large vacuum fluctuations of a quantum stress tensor operator can be described by the asymptotic behavior of the probability distribution of the time or spacetime averaged operator.

• Here we focus on the case of stress tensor operators averaged with a sampling function in time.
• The Minkowski vacuum state is not an eigenstate of the time-averaged operator, but can be expanded in terms of its eigenstates.
• We calculate the probability distribution and the cumulative probability distribution for obtaining a given value in a measurement of the time-averaged operator taken in the vacuum state.