Bei-Lok B. Hu is Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and co-authored Nonequilibrium Quantum Field Theory (Cambridge, 2008). His research in theoretical physics focuses on gravitation and quantum theory. Enric Verdaguer is Professor of Physics at the Universitat de Barcelona. He is a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, specializes in gravitation and gravitational quantum physics, and is co-author of Gravitational Solitons (Cambridge, 2001).

'This excellent book is written by two of the best experts in both fields and may be useful for both new researchers and experienced scientists who want to extend or improve their knowledge …the coverage is very extensive and the style is more on the review side … the area of semiclassical gravity is very extensive and, in particular, there are not only different approaches but also different points of view on many particular issues … the book is well written and very informative. As a reader, I have the temptation to stop all other activities and spend some time reading this book further and better learn those topics which I would like to know. And it is certain that many potential readers will find it very useful.' Ilya Shapiro, Mathematical Review Clippings

• Preface; 1. Overview: main themes. Key issues. Reader's guide; Part I. Effective Action and Regularization, Stress Tensor and Fluctuations: 2. `In-out' effective action. Dimensional regularization; 3. `In-in' effective action. Stress tensor. Thermal fields; 4. Stress-energy tensor and correlators: zeta-function method; 5. Stress-energy tensor and correlation. Point separation; Part II. Infrared Behavior, 2Pi, 1/n Backreaction and Semiclassical Gravity: 6. Infrared behavior of interacting quantum fields; 7. Advanced field theory topics; 8. Backreaction of early universe quantum processes; Part III. Stochastic Gravity: 9. Metric correlations at one-loop: in-in and large N; 10. The Einstein-Langevin equation; 11. Metric fluctuations in Minkowski spacetime; Part IV. Cosmological and Black Hole Backreaction with Fluctuations: 12. Cosmological backreaction with fluctuations; 13. Structure formation in the early universe; 14. Black hole backreaction and fluctuations; Part V. Quantum Curvature Fluctuations in De Sitter Spacetime: 15. Stress-energy tensor fluctuations in de Sitter space; 16. Two-point metric perturbations in de Sitter; 17. Riemann tensor correlator in de Sitter; 18. Epilogue: linkage with quantum gravity; References; Index.