Quantum Field Theory in Curved Spacetime and Black Hole Thermodynamics (Chicago Lectures in Physics)

I find this text very approachable and useful. If the presentation feels abstruse or the proofs incomplete, I would suggest reading Birrell and Davies first. Perhaps the two together? Wald is not intended to be a reiteration of Birrel and Davies, but rather a more abstract extension of it. Because QFT on a curved manifold is more about GR than about the intricacies of standard QFT, I believe that prerequisites require a general understanding of QFT in Minkowski Space and a more thorough understanding of GR.

its a great. Just what I was looking for and what I needed. Thank you very much for your efforts

a great book

Try another book that goes even deeper in only 30 pages.It's called "Everything About Black Holes" and it explains everything with science. It's on Amazon.

This is not a book but rather a well organized set of notes. As such, the author doesn't go into much detail when a derivation is presented. One of the best features of the book is that it isn't very expensive, so the lack of detail I mentioned before doesn't feel that bad, especially since it contains many references which can be useful to fill in the blanks. There is only one thing that I didn't like about this text: the typeset. The notes seem to be written in Word, making it cumbersome to read equations, and while their physical content is explained in words, this deal breaker made me award the notes only three stars.

I had hoped this would be an affordable substitute for Birrell and Davies. Unfortunately, it is no substitute. The presentation is very sketchy and abstract. If you are into algebraic QFT and that sort of stuff then maybe you will like this book more than I did.

This should be a required read for every single person who is knowledgeable in both quantum field theory and general relativity. One of the main focuses of this book is that it presents the limitations one comes across from a particle interpretation of quantum field theory. It then follows this by expressing a more general approach to the topic with vast influences from general relativity. In this book, you accept a field theory as a field theory, and nothing more. I appreciate this honesty, as it prevents the student or researcher from losing sight of the real goal.That being said, not much will make sense here if one is solely knowledge in only one field of physics. It really does take concepts from both QFT and GR. After it describes a generalized approach to quantum fields in a curved spacetime, it proceeds to discuss in some detail the fundamental elements of black hole thermodynamics.Is this the most rigorous book ever written on the topics it covers? Certainly not, but it does not intend to be. This book intends to discuss in clarity what it wishes to cover before moving on to how each idea relates to one another. It is for this reason that one should carefully approach this book knowing what they are getting into while already having their mathematics of QFT and GR entrenched.If the student or researcher does as I suggested, they will gain a lot of intuition from something that should not take a very long time to read.All students, scientists, and anyone generally interested in further applications of QFT and GR should complete this book before moving on to more advanced applications of what is discussed here. This is also an essential topic for those wishing to move further into ideas such as quantum gravity and conformal field theory.