TITLE: "A Method to Compute the Stress-Energy Tensor of Fermions in Static Spherically Symmetric Spacetimes"; Alternate title: "Semiclassical Gravity for Dummies".

SPEAKER: Peter Groves,

TIME: Thursday May 1, 2003 at 4 PM

PLACE: George P. Williams, Jr. Lecture Hall, (Olin 101)

An introduction to the world of fermions (my quasi-promise is to explain all technical jargon) in semiclassical gravity will be given. The notion of quantum mechanical spin will be introduced, and the celebrated Dirac (of T-shirt fame) equation shown in flat spacetime. I will then discuss how to modify this equation for curved spacetimes. General relativity will be introduced, and the basics of black holes and Hawking radiation will be motivated/heuristically explained. Then I will explain how the oft -repeated mantra of general relativity "matter tells spacetime how to curve" applies for the semiclassical approximation. This leads into the notion of the "stress-energy" being an important thing to calculate. Then in the remaining 1 minute and 35 seconds, I will explain what it is that I calculated for my doctoral work.