| The main theme of this Thesis is the connection between Quantum Gravity and Cosmology. In the First Part (Chapters 1 to 5) I give an introduction to the Holographic Principle. The Second Part is a collection of my research work and it is articulated as follows. Chapter 7 is dedicated to an analysis of the renormalization properties of quantum field theories in de Sitter space. It is shown that only two of the maximally invariant vacuum states of free fields lead to consistent perturbation expansions. In Chapter 8 I first present a complete quantum mechanical description of a flat FRW universe with equation of state p = rho. Then I show a detailed correspondence with an heuristic picture of such a universe as a dense black hole fluid. In the end it is explained how features of the geometry are derived from purely quantum input. Chapter 9 studies the problem of infrared renormalization of particle masses in de Sitter space. It is shown, in a toy model in which the graviton is replaced with a minimally coupled massless scalar field, that loop corrections to these masses are infrared (IR) divergent. It is argued that this implies anomalous dependence of masses on the cosmological constant, in a true theory of quantum gravity. |
