Non-local gravitational effective action and particle production

Abstract

We study the effective action for gravity obtained after the integration of scalar matter fields, using the local momentum representation based on the Riemann normal coordinates expansion. By considering this expansion around different space-time points, we also compute the non-local terms together with the more usual divergent ones. We discuss the applicability of our results to the calculation of particle production rates in cosmological backgrounds and compare this method with the traditional Bogolyubov transformations.