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Semiclassical gravity is the approximation to the theory of quantum gravity in which one treats matter fields as being quantum and the gravitational field as being classical.

In semiclassical gravity, matter is represented by quantum matter fields that propagate according to the theory of quantum fields in curved spacetime. The spacetime in which the fields propagate is classical but dynamical. The curvature of the spacetime is given by the semiclassical Einstein equations, which relate the curvature of the spacetime, given by the Einstein tensor ${\displaystyle G_{\mu \nu }}$, to the expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor operator, ${\displaystyle T_{\mu \nu }}$, of the matter fields:

${\displaystyle G_{\mu \nu }=8\pi G\left\langle {\hat {T}}_{\mu \nu }\right\rangle _{\psi }}$

where G is Newton's constant and ${\displaystyle \psi }$ indicates the quantum state of the matter fields.

Since the theory of quantum gravity is not yet known, it is difficult to say what is the regime of validity of semiclassical gravity. However, one can formally show that semiclassical gravity could be deduced from quantum gravity by considering N copies of the quantum matter fields, and taking the limit of N going to infinity while keeping the product GN constant. At diagrammatic level, semiclassical gravity corresponds to summing all Feynman diagrams which do not have loops of gravitons (but have an arbitrary number of matter loops). Semiclassical gravity can also be deduced from an axiomatic approach.

The most important applications of semiclassical gravity are to understand the Hawking radiation of black holes and the generation of random gaussian-distributed perturbations in the theory of cosmic inflation, which is thought to occur at the very beginnings of the big bang.

• Birrell, N. D. and Davies, P. C. W., Quantum fields in curved space, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1982).

• Theories of gravitation
• Quantum field theory