Quantum inequalities in two-dimensional Minkowski spacetime

We generalize some results of Ford and Roman constraining the possible behaviors of the renormalized expected stress-energy tensor of a free massless scalar field in two-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. Ford and Roman showed that the energy density measured by an inertial observer, when averaged with respect to the observers proper time by integrating against some weighting function, is bounded below by a negative lower bound proportional to the reciprocal of the square of the averaging time scale. However, the proof required a particular choice for the weighting function. We extend the Ford-Roman result in two ways. (i) We calculate the optimum (maximum possible) lower bound and characterize the state which achieves this lower bound; the optimum lower bound differs by a factor of six from the bound derived by Ford and Roman for their choice of smearing function. (ii) We calculate the lower bound for arbitrary, smooth positive weighting functions. We also derive similar lower bounds on the spatial average of energy density at a fixed moment of time. [S0556-2821(97)07420-1]. PACS number(s): 04.62.+v, 03.70.+k, 42.50.Dv.