Tunnelling and Unruh-DeWitt methods in curved spacetimes

The analysis and the results contained in this work are rooted in a first contact between the quantum theory and the general theory of relativity. By first contact it is meant that we are not considering candidates for “unified theories", but rather we focus on aspects of the full quantum theory in changing geometric backgrounds: the analysis of such an interaction already had important applications in cosmology, e.g. in the description of the evolution of fields in inflationary scenarios. Another compelling – and still growing – area of application is the study of thermodynamical properties of gravitional systems, which covers the main bulk of this thesis.