Quantum metric fluctuations in cosmological and black hole spacetimes – Albert Roura
Date: Tue. September 20th, 2005, 11:30 am-12:30 pmLocation: Rockefeller 221
It is expected that a number of quantum aspects of the gravitational field and its interaction with the remaining matter fields can be studied within a low-energy effective field theory approach provided that the typical scales involved are much larger than the Planck length. This has been considered in some detail for weak gravitational fields, but physically interesting situations often involve strong fields. Some non-equilibrium field theory methods which are particularly useful to address gravitational back reaction problems, such as the closed time path (CTP) formalism, will be briefly reviewed. I will then explain how to extract information on metric fluctuations and discuss applications to black hole and cosmological spacetimes.