Download or read book Heat Kernel and Quantum Gravity written by Ivan G. Avramidi and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2003-07-01 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tackles quantum gravity via the so-called background field method and its effective action functional. The author presents an explicitly covariant and effective technique to calculate the de Witt coefficients and to analyze the Schwinger-de Wit asymptotic expansion of the effective action. He also investigates the ultraviolet behaviour of higher-derivative quantum gravity. The book addresses theoretical physicists, graduate students as well as researchers, but should also be of interest to physicists working in mathematical or elementary particle physics.