QUANTUM CORRECTIONS TO GRAVITY AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR COSMOLOGY AND ASTROPHYSICS

The quantum contributions to the gravitational action are relatively easy to calculate in the higher derivative sector of the theory. However, the applications to the post-inflationary cosmology and astrophysics require the corrections to the Einstein-Hilbert action and to the cosmological constant, and those we cannot derive yet in a consistent and safe way. At the same time, if we assume that these quantum terms are covariant and that they have relevant magnitude, their functional form can be defined up to a single free parameter, which can be defined on the phenomenological basis. It turns out that the quantum correction may lead, in principle, to surprisingly strong and interesting effects in astrophysics and cosmology.(a)