The application of adiabatic regularization to calculations of cosmological interest

Abstract
It is shown that the method of adiabatic regularization, proposed by Parker & Fulling for the removal of divergences in the vacuum expecta­tion value of the stress tensor of a quantized field propagating in a Robertson-Walker background, is well suited to calculations of cosmological interest. After verifying the equivalence of the adiabatic and point­-splitting regularization schemes, both analytical and numerical examples of the use of the former method are given.