Emilio Elizalde - Böcker

This book tells the story of how, over the past century, dedicated observers and pioneering scientists achieved our current understanding of the universe.

This book tells the story of how, over the past century, dedicated observers and pioneering scientists achieved our current understanding of the universe.

Zeta-function regularization is a powerful method in perturbation theory, and this book is a comprehensive guide for the student of this subject. Everything is explained in detail, in particular the mathematical difficulties and tricky points, and several applications are given to show how the procedure works in practice, for example in the Casimir effect, gravity and string theory, high-temperature phase transition, topological symmetry breaking, and non-commutative spacetime. The formulae, some of which are new, can be directly applied in creating physically meaningful, accurate numerical calculations. The book acts both as a basic introduction and a collection of exercises for those who want to apply this regularization procedure in practice.Thoroughly revised, updated and expanded, this new edition includes novel, explicit formulas on the general quadratic, the Chowla-Selberg series case, an interplay with the Hadamard calculus, and also features a fresh chapter on recent cosmological applications, including the calculation of the vacuum energy fluctuations at large scale in braneworld and other models.

This year's GIFT Seminar reviewed some recent developments and new perspectives on Quantum Gravity and Quantum Cosmology. The topics treated at a graduate level include an Introduction to Quantum Gravity, Path Integral Measure, Non-Perturbative Canonical Formulation (Ashtekar's variable, loop space quantization). Topics on Quantum Cosmology include the Cosmological Constant Problem, Minisuperspace Models, Wormholes and Baby Universes, and Inflationary Cosmology.

This book is the result of several years of work by the authors on different aspects of zeta functions and related topics. The aim is twofold. On one hand, a considerable number of useful formulas, essential for dealing with the different aspects of zeta-function regularization (analytic continuation, asymptotic expansions), many of which appear here, in book format, for the first time are presented. On the other hand, the authors show explicitly how to make use of such formulas and techniques in practical applications to physical problems of very different nature. Virtually all types of zeta functions are dealt with in the book.