The heat-kernel coefficient in the presence of boundary discontinuities

J S Apps, J S Dowker
1998 Classical and quantum gravity  
We consider the heat-kernel on a manifold whose boundary is piecewise smooth. The set of independent geometrical quantities required to construct an expression for the contribution of the boundary discontinuities to the C_2 heat-kernel coefficient is derived in the case of a scalar field with Dirichlet and Robin boundary conditions. The coefficient is then determined using conformal symmetry and evaluation on some specific manifolds. For the Robin case a perturbation technique is also developed
more » ... and employed. The contributions to the smeared heat-kernel coefficient and cocycle function are calculated. Some incomplete results for spinor fields with mixed conditions are also presented.
doi:10.1088/0264-9381/15/5/005 fatcat:7elojpvmx5bk7m3oyolgwnvvoa