  In this series of lectures a method is developed to compute one-loop shifts
to classical masses of kinks, multi-component kinks, and self-dual vortices.
Canonical quantization is used to show that the mass shift induced by one-loop
quantum fluctuations is the trace of the square root of the differential
operator governing these fluctuations. Standard mathematical techniques are
used to deal with some powers of pseudo-differential operators. Ultraviolet
divergences are tamed by using generalized zeta function regularization methods
and, then performing zero-point energy and mass renormalizations.
