Related papers: Quantization of charged fields in the presence of …
The aim of these notes is to elucidate some aspects of quantum field theory in curved spacetime, especially those relating to the notion of particles. A selection of issues relevant to wave-particle duality is given. The case of a generic…
The uniqueness theorems for general relativity and Yang-Mills theories can be circumvented by dropping the ubiquitous, yet often implicit, assumption that physical fields, such as the spacetime metric, are fundamental. The novel concept of…
This article provides a brief overview of some fundamental effects of quantum fields under extreme conditions. For the Schwinger mechanism, Hawking radiation, and the Unruh effect, analogies to quantum optics are discussed, which might help…
The subject of this thesis is the coupling of quantum fields to a classical gravitational background in a semiclassical fashion. It contains a thorough introduction into quantum field theory on curved spacetime with a focus on the…
We investigate the properties of the Schwarzschild black hole geometry involving leading one-loop long-distance quantum effects, which arise within the framework of effective field theories of gravity. Our analysis reveals that geodesic…
We investigate the quantum dynamics of a charged scalar field in the near-horizon region of a near-extremal charged BTZ black hole. A controlled expansion of the Einstein-Maxwell equations reveals an emergent warped AdS$_2 \times S^1$…
One-loop effects for quantum fields living on manifolds containing conical singularities are investigated in the context of cosmic string background and of finite-temperature theory in the Rindler wedge or outside the horizon of a…
We develop the quantum field theory of fermion mixing in curved spacetime and discuss the role of unitarily inequivalent representations in the particle interpretation of the theory. We derive general oscillation formulae and apply them to…
For more than 80 years theoretical physicists have been trying to develop a theory of quantum gravity which would successfully combine the tenets of Einstein's theory of general relativity (GR) together with those of quantum field theory.…
This pedagogical review aims at presenting the fundamental aspects of the theory of inflationary cosmological perturbations of quantum-mechanical origin. The analogy with the well-known Schwinger effect is discussed in detail and a…
We present a detailed description of a quantum scalar field theory within a flat spacetime confined to a cavity with perfectly reflecting moving boundaries. Moreover, we establish an equivalence between this time-dependent setting and a…
We adopt the general formalism for analyzing evolution of gaussian states of quantized fields in time-dependent backgrounds in the Schrodinger picture (presented in detail in arXiv:0708.1233 and 0708.1237) to study the example of a…
We present an effective theory to describe the quantization of spherically symmetric vacuum in loop quantum gravity. We include anomaly-free holonomy corrections through a canonical transformation of the Hamiltonian of general relativity,…
Similarly to the well-known phenomenon of particle / anti-particle pair production in strong electromagnetic fields (the Schwinger effect), the na\"ive matter field vacuum state can be excited by time-dependent, curved spacetime geometries.…
We study classical and quantum aspects of electromagnetic perturbations on black hole space-times. We develop an elegant formalism introduced by Wald, which sets up the theory of linear perturbations in a Type-D background in a compact and…
A boundary undergoing relativistic motion can create particles from quantum vacuum fluctuations in a phenomenon known as the dynamical Casimir effect. We examine the creation of particles, and more generally the transformation of quantum…
Particle creation by strong and time-varying backgrounds is a robust prediction of quantum field theory. Another well-established feature of field theory is that classical symmetries do not always extend to the quantized theory. When this…
Quantum fluctuations on curved spacetimes cause the emission of pairs of particles from the quantum vacuum, as in the Hawking effect from black holes. We use an optical analogue to gravity to investigate the influence of the curvature on…
Quantum foundations are still unsettled, with mixed effects on science and society. By now it should be possible to obtain consensus on at least one issue: Are the fundamental constituents fields or particles? As this paper shows,…
The gap between a microscopic theory for quantum spacetime and the semiclassical physics of blackholes is bridged by treating the blackhole spacetimes as highly excited states of a class of nonlocal field theories. All the blackhole…