Euclidean approach to the entropy for a scalar field in Rindler-like space-times.

Abstract: The off-shell statistical-mechanical entropy for a massless scalar field in a D-dimensional Rindler-like space-time is investigated within the conical Euclidean approach in the manifold Cβ × MN , Cβ being the 2-dimensional cone, making use of the zeta-function regularisation. Due to the presence of conical singularities, it is shown that the relation between the zeta-function and the heat kernel is non trivial and, as first pointed out by Cheeger, requires a separation between small and large eigenvalues of the Laplace operator. As a consequence, in the massless case, the (naive) non existence of the Mellin transform is by-passed by the Cheeger’s analytical continuation of the zetafunction on manifold with conical singularities. Furthermore, the continuous spectrum leads to the introduction of smeared traces. In general, it is pointed out that the presence of the divergences may depend on the smearing function and they arise in removing the smearing cutoff. With a simple choice of the smearing function, horizon divergences in the statistical mechanical quantities are recovered and these are similar to the divergences found by means of off-shell methods like the brick wall model, the optical conformal transformation techniques or the canonical path integral method.