Heat kernel and quantum gravity (Q4948554)

For quantum field theory (QFT) in curved space-time, the background field method is most powerful. This has been given in chapter 1. The vacuum transition amplitude between two causally connected in- and out-regions can be obtained by a functional integral (or path integral), see his eq. 1.8.: \[ \exp\left\{ {i\over\hbar} W(J)\right\}= \int d\varphi M (\varphi) \exp\left\{ {i\over\hbar} \bigl[S(\varphi) +J_k\varphi^k \bigr]\right\}. \] For evaluating such integrals, the De Witt coefficients have been calculated in chapter 2, and applied to the Schwinger expansion in chapter 3. In the introduction the author writes at page 5: ``The investigation of the ultraviolet behavior of higher-derivative quantum gravity is an important and actual problem in the general program of constructing a consistent quantum gravity'' and this is the topic of the fourth chapter, representing the longest of the 4 chapters of this book. As this book is based on the author's thesis at Moscow University, which was finished some 10 years ago, the references are restricted to the range till the late 1980s only.