Trace anomaly for the Stress-Energy Tensor of a Self-interacting Scalar field on a curved spacetime

In several models of interest in theoretical physics, the trace or conformal anomaly of an interacting QFT plays a prominent role in the functional form of specific observables which can be tested in experiments. Yet, current techniques in theoretical physics do not allow for a precise and algorithmic computation of these observables. We prove that perturbative AQFT is a computationally efficient framework to evaluate these quantities. As a concrete example, we compute the trace anomaly of the stress-energy tensor for a self-interacting scalar field theory on a globally hyperbolic spacetime (M,g) up to the third order in the interaction parameter. Based on a joint work with C. Dappiaggi and M. Goi --- Ann. Henri Poincaré (2025), doi:10.1007/s00023-025-01580-0.