A novel method for renormalization in quantum-field theory in curved spacetime

In quantum-field theory in curved spacetime, two important physical quantities are the expectation value of the stress-energy tensor [Formula: see text] and of the square of the field operator [Formula: see text]. These expectation values must be renormalized, which is usually performed via the so-called point-splitting prescription. However, the renormalization method that is usually implemented in the literature, in principle, only applies to static, spherically-symmetric spacetimes, and does not readily generalize to other types of spacetime. We present a novel implementation of the renormalization procedure which may be used in the future for more general spacetimes, such as Kerr black hole spacetime. As an example, we apply our method to the renormalization of [Formula: see text] for a massless scalar field in Bertotti–Robinson spacetime.