Self-force on an arbitrarily coupled scalar charge in cylindrical thin-shell spacetimes

Abstract

Abstract We consider the arbitrarily coupled field and self-force of a static massless scalar charge in cylindrical spacetimes with one or two asymptotic regions, with the only matter content concentrated in a thin-shell characterized by the trace of the extrinsic curvature jump $$\kappa $$ κ . The self-force is studied numerically and analytically in terms of the curvature coupling $$\xi $$ ξ . We found the critical values $$\xi _c^{(n)} = n/\left( \rho (r_s)\,\kappa \right) $$ ξc(n)=n/ρ(rs)κ , with $$n \in {\mathbb {N}}$$ n∈N and $$\rho (r_s)$$ ρ(rs) the metric’s profile function at the position of the shell, for which the scalar field is divergent in the background configuration. The pathological behavior is removed by restricting the coupling to a domain of stability. The coupling has a significant influence over the self-force at the vicinities of the shell, and we identified $$\xi =1/4$$ ξ=1/4 as the value for which the scalar force changes sign at a neighborhood of $$r_s$$ rs ; if $$\kappa (1-4\xi )>0$$ κ(1-4ξ)>0 the shell acts repulsively as an effective potential barrier, while if $$\kappa (1-4\xi )<0$$ κ(1-4ξ)<0 it attracts the charge as a potential well. The sign of the asymptotic self-force only depends on whether there is an angle deficit or not on the external region where the charge is placed; conical asymptotics produce a leading attractive force, while Minkowski regions produce a repulsive asymptotic self-force.