Semiclassical Cosmological Constant in Anti-de Sitter and de Sitter Spacetimes

Abstract: We investigate semiclassical backreaction of a quantized scalar field in four-dimensional anti-de Sitter (AdS) and de Sitter (dS) spacetimes from two complementary perspectives. First, we determine self-consistent field parameters for which the prescribed geometry remains an exact solution with the bare cosmological constant fixed to its classical geometric value. Second, we retain the renormalized vacuum stress--energy tensor on the prescribed background and study its contribution to the effective cosmological constant. In AdS, the self-consistent solutions depend on the admissible boundary conditions, while the corresponding dS solutions are obtained within the Bunch--Davies state, revealing sensitivity to global and state-dependent information. For massless configurations, the effective cosmological constant takes the universal form $Λ_{\rm eff}=A/\ell<sup>{2}+B/\ell<sup>{4}$, allowing comparison of classical and quantum contributions and identification of the characteristic curvature scales at which their relative importance changes. We then test whether the classical relation between AdS and dS extends to the quantum level through the formal continuation $\ell\rightarrow i\ell$. Although the classical curvature term is mapped correctly, the quantum contribution is not: for minimal coupling the AdS and dS coefficients are in the ratio $29/61$, while for conformal coupling they have equal magnitude and opposite sign. These discrepancies show that semiclassical backreaction is not determined by local curvature alone, but retains information about the quantum state, boundary conditions, and global structure. The results clarify the limitations of analytic continuation as a map between the semiclassical quantum theories of AdS and dS.