Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to study renormalization of Wick polynomials of quantum Boson fields in locally covariant algebraic quantum field theory in curved spacetime. Vector fields are described as sections of natural vector bundles over globally hyperbolic spacetimes and quantized in a locally covariant framework through the known functorial machinery in terms of local *-algebras. These quantized fields may be defined on spacetimes with given classical background fields, also sections of natural vector bundles: The most obvious one is the metric of the spacetime itself, but we encompass also the case of generic spacetime tensors as background fields. In our framework also physical quantities like the mass of the field or the coupling to the curvature are viewed as background fields. Wick powers of the quantized vector field are then axiomatically defined imposing in particular local covariance, scaling properties and smooth dependence on smooth perturbation of the background fields. A general classification theorem is established for finite renormalization terms (or counterterms) arising when comparing different solutions satisfying the defining axioms of Wick powers. The result is then specialized to the case of spacetime tensor fields. In particular, the case of a vector Klein-Gordon field and the case of a scalar field renormalized together with its derivatives are discussed as examples. In each case, a more precise statement about the structure of the counterterms is proved. The finite renormalization terms turn out to be finite-order polynomials tensorially and locally constructed with the backgrounds fields and their covariant derivatives whose coefficients are locally smooth functions of polynomial scalar invariants constructed from the so-called marginal subset of the background fields. Our main technical tools are based on the Peetre-Slov\'ak theorem characterizing differential operators and on the classification of smooth invariants on representations of reductive Lie groups.