Covariant perturbation expansion is an important method in quantum field theory. In this paper an expansion up to arbitrary order for off-diagonal heat kernels in flat space based on the covariant perturbation expansion is given. In literature, only diagonal heat kernels are calculated based on the covariant perturbation expansion.
We derive an integral-free thermodynamic perturbation series expansion for quantum partition functions which enables an analytical term-by-term calculation of the series. The expansion is carried out around the partition function of the classical component of the Hamiltonian with the expansion parameter being the strength of the off-diagonal, or quantum, portion. To demonstrate the usefulness of the technique we analytically compute to third order the partition functions of the 1D Ising model with longitudinal and transverse fields, and the quantum 1D Heisenberg model.
An analytic method is proposed to compute the surface energy and elementary excitations of the XXZ spin chain with generic non-diagonal boundary fields. For the gapped case, in some boundary parameter regimes the contributions of the two boundary fields to the surface energy are non-additive. Such a correlation effect between the two boundaries also depends on the parity of the site number $N$ even in the thermodynamic limit $Ntoinfty$. For the gapless case, contributions of the two boundary fields to the surface energy are additive due to the absence of long-range correlation in the bulk. Although the $U(1)$ symmetry of the system is broken, exact spinon-like excitations, which obviously do not carry spin-$frac12$, are observed. The present method provides an universal procedure to deal with quantum integrable systems either with or without $U(1)$ symmetry.
We consider the problem of the symmetry of the off-diagonal heat-kernel coefficients as well as the coefficients corresponding to the short-distance-divergent part of the Hadamard expansion in general smooth (analytic or not) manifolds. The requirement of such a symmetry played a central r^{o}le in the theory of the point-splitting one-loop renormalization of the stress tensor in either Riemannian or Lorentzian manifolds. Actually, the symmetry of these coefficients has been assumed as a hypothesis in several papers concerning these issues without an explicit proof. The difficulty of a direct proof is related to the fact that the considered off-diagonal heat-kernel expansion, also in the Riemannian case, in principle, may be not a proper asymptotic expansion. On the other hand, direct computations of the off-diagonal heat-kernel coefficients are impossibly difficult in nontrivial cases and thus no case is known in the literature where the symmetry does not hold. By approximating $C^infty$ metrics with analytic metrics in common (totally normal) geodesically convex neighborhoods, it is rigorously proven that, in general $C^infty$ Riemannian manifolds, any point admits a geodesically convex neighborhood where the off-diagonal heat-kernel coefficients, as well as the relevant Hadamards expansion coefficients, are symmetric functions of the two arguments.
Off-diagonal profiles of local densities (e.g. order parameter or energy density) are calculated at the bulk critical point, by conformal methods, for different types of boundary conditions (free, fixed and mixed). Such profiles, which are defined by a non-vanishing matrix element of the appropriate operator between the ground state and the corresponding lowest excited state of the strip Hamiltonian, enter into the expression of two-point correlation functions on a strip. They are of interest in the finite-size scaling study of bulk and surface critical behaviour since they allow the elimination of regular contributions. The conformal profiles, which are obtained through a conformal transformation of the correlation functions from the half-plane to the strip, are in agreement with the results of a direct calculation, for the energy density of the two-dimensional Ising model.
Weak pion production off the nucleon at low energies has been systematically investigated in manifestly relativistic baryon chiral perturbation theory with explicit inclusion of the $Delta$(1232) resonance. Most of the involved low-energy constants have been previously determined in other processes such as pion-nucleon elastic scattering and electromagnetic pion production off the nucleon. For numerical estimates, the few remaining constants are set to be of natural size. As a result, the total cross sections for single pion production on neutrons and protons, induced either by neutrino or antineutrino, are predicted. Our results are consistent with the scarce existing experimental data except in the $ u_mu nto mu^-npi^+$ channel, where higher-order contributions might still be significant. The $Delta$ resonance mechanisms lead to sizeable contributions in all channels, especially in $ u_mu pto mu^- ppi^+$, even though the considered energies are close to the production threshold. The present study provides a well founded low-energy benchmark for phenomenological models aimed at the description of weak pion production processes in the broad kinematic range of interest for current and future neutrino-oscillation experiments.