English

Boltzmann Collision Term

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2009-11-11 v1

Abstract

We derive the Boltzmann equation for scalar fields using the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism. The focus lies on the derivation of the collision term. We show that the relevant self-energy diagrams have a factorization property. The collision term assumes the Boltzmann-like form of scattering probability times statistical factors for those self-energy diagrams which correspond to tree level scattering processes. Our proof covers scattering processes with any number of external particles, which come from self-energy diagrams with any number of loops.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-ph/0510417,
  title  = {Boltzmann Collision Term},
  author = {Steffen Weinstock},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-ph/0510417},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

17 pages, 4 figures