No Arabic abstract
We find the Bogoliubov coefficient from the tunneling boundary condition on a charged particle coupled to a static electric field $E_0 sech^2 (z/L)$ and, using the regularization scheme in Phys. Rev. D 78, 105013 (2008), obtain the exact one-loop effective action in scalar and spinor QED. It is shown that the effective action satisfies the general relation between the vacuum persistence and the mean number of produced pairs. We advance an approximation method for general electric fields and show the duality between the space-dependent and time-dependent electric fields of the same form at the leading order of the effective actions.
We use the evolution operator method to find the one-loop effective action of scalar and spinor QED in electric field backgrounds in terms of the Bogoliubov coefficient between the ingoing and the outgoing vacua. We obtain the exact one-loop effective action for a Sauter-type electric field, E_0 sech^2 (t/tau), and show that the imaginary part correctly yields the vacuum persistence. The renormalized effective action shows the general relation between the vacuum persistence and the total mean number of created pairs for the constant and the Sauter-type electric field.
We advance a novel method for the finite-temperature effective action for nonequilibrium quantum fields and find the QED effective action in time-dependent electric fields, where charged pairs evolve out of equilibrium. The imaginary part of the effective action consists of thermal loops of the Fermi-Dirac or Bose-Einstein distribution for the initial thermal ensemble weighted with factors for vacuum fluctuations. And the real part of the effective action is determined by the mean number of produced pairs, vacuum polarization, and thermal distribution. The mean number of produced pairs is equal to twice the imaginary part. We explicitly find the finite-temperature effective action in a constant electric field.
In four spacetime dimensions, all ${cal N} =1$ supergravity-matter systems can be formulated in the so-called $mathsf{U}(1)$ superspace proposed by Howe in 1981. This paper is devoted to the study of those geometric structures which characterise a background $mathsf{U}(1)$ superspace and are important in the context of supersymmetric field theory in curved space. We introduce (conformal) Killing tensor superfields $ell_{(alpha_1 dots alpha_m) ({dot alpha}_1 dots {dot alpha}_n)}$, with $m$ and $n$ non-negative integers, $m+n>0$, and elaborate on their significance in the following cases: (i) $m=n=1$; (ii) $m-1=n=0$; and (iii) $m=n>1$. The (conformal) Killing vector superfields $ell_{alpha dot alpha}$ generate the (conformal) isometries of curved superspace, which are symmetries of every (conformal) supersymmetric field theory. The (conformal) Killing spinor superfields $ell_{alpha }$ generate extended (conformal) supersymmetry transformations. The (conformal) Killing tensor superfields with $m=n>1$ prove to generate all higher symmetries of the (massless) massive Wess-Zumino operator.
Recently in the framework of a two-loop order calculation for an effective field theory of scalar and vector fields interacting with the metric field we have shown that for the cosmological constant term which is fixed by the condition of vanishing vacuum energy the graviton remains massless and there exists a self-consistent effective field theory of general relativity defined on a flat Minkowski background. In the current paper we extend the two-loop analysis for an effective field theory of fermions interacting with the gravitational field and obtain an analogous result. We also address the issues of fine tuning of the strong interaction contribution to the vacuum energy and the compatibility of chiral symmetry in the light quark sector with the consistency of the effective field theory of general relativity in a flat Minkowski background.
The quantum effective action yields equations of motion and correlation functions including all quantum corrections. We discuss here how it encodes also Noether currents at the full quantum level. This holds both for covariantly conserved currents associated to real symmetries that leave the action invariant as well as for non-conserved Noether currents associated to extended symmetry transformations which change the action, but in a specific way. We discuss then in particular symmetries and extended symmetries associated to space-time geometry for relativistic quantum field theories. These encompass local dilatations or Weyl gauge transformation, local Lorentz transformations and local shear transformations. Together they constitute the symmetry group of the frame bundle GL$(d)$. The corresponding non-conserved Noether currents are the dilatation or Weyl current, the spin current and the shear current for which divergence-type equations of motion are obtained from the quantum effective action.