APPLICATIONS OF THE MELLIN-BARNES INTEGRAL-REPRESENTATION

We apply the Mellin-Barnes integral representation to several situatio ns of interest in mathematical physics. At the purely mathematical lev el, we derive useful asymptotic expansions of different zeta-functions and partition functions. These results are then employed in different topics in quantum field theory, which include the high-temperature ex pansion of the free energy of a scalar field in ultrastatic curved spa cetime, the asymptotics of the p-brane density of states, and an expli cit approach to the asymptotics of the determinants that appear in str ing theory.