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Quantum Field Theory in Curved Spacetime (2nd Edition)

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2025-06-13 v5 High Energy Physics - Theory Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

The 2023 second edition of a 2006 encyclopedia article on mathematical aspects of quantum field theory in curved spacetimes (QFTCST). Section-titles (with new sections indicated with stars) are: Introduction and preliminaries, Construction of a *-algebra for a real linear scalar field on globally hyperbolic spacetimes and some general theorems, *More about (quasifree) Hadamard states, Particle creation and the limitations of the particle concept, Theory of the stress-energy tensor, *More about the intersection of QFTCST with AQFT and the Fewster-Verch No-Go Theorem, Hawking and Unruh effects, *More about (classical and) quantum fields on black hole backgrounds, Non-globally hyperbolic spacetimes and the time-machine question, *More about QFT on non-globally hyperbolic spacetimes, Other related topics and some warnings. The article contains many references. It also includes a review of, and also compares and contrasts, recent results on the implications of QFTCST for the question of the instability of three sorts of Cauchy horizon -- first those inside black holes such as especially Reissner-Nordstr\"om-de Sitter and Kerr-de Sitter, second the compactly generated Cauchy horizons of spacetimes in which time-machines get manufactured, and third the Cauchy horizon of the spacetime which is believed to describe evaporating black holes and which underlies (one version of) the black hole information-loss puzzle.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2308.14517,
  title  = {Quantum Field Theory in Curved Spacetime (2nd Edition)},
  author = {Bernard S. Kay},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.14517},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

37 pages, 7 figures. V2: small improvements and additions, 3 figures redrawn, subsections renamed as sections, dedications, references and acknowledgments added. V3 typos corrected, refs updated. V4 2 paragraphs and 4 references added + minor corrections. V5 Important sentence inserted 5 paragraphs before the end of Section 7. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:gr-qc/0601008

R2 v1 2026-06-28T12:05:59.840Z