THERMAL PARTICLE CREATION IN COSMOLOGICAL SPACETIMES - A STOCHASTIC APPROACH

The stochastic method based on the influence functional formalism intr oduced in an earlier paper to treat particle creation in near-uniforml y accelerated detectors and collapsing masses is applied here to treat thermal and near-thermal radiance in certain types of cosmological ex pansions. It is indicated how the appearance of thermal radiance in di fferent cosmological spacetimes and in the two apparently distinct cla sses of black hole and cosmological spacetimes can be understood under a unifying conceptual and methodological framework. [S0556-2821(97)02 520-4]. PACS number(s): 04.62.+v, 05.40.+j, 42.50.Lc, 98.80.Hw.