QED Effective Action at Finite Temperature: Two-Loop Dominance
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
2009-09-25 v1 High Energy Physics - Theory
Abstract
We calculate the two-loop effective action of QED for arbitrary constant electromagnetic fields at finite temperature T in the limit of T much smaller than the electron mass. It is shown that in this regime the two-loop contribution always exceeds the influence of the one-loop part due to the thermal excitation of the internal photon. As an application, we study light propagation and photon splitting in the presence of a magnetic background field at low temperature. We furthermore discover a thermally induced contribution to pair production in electric fields.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.hep-ph/9909500,
title = {QED Effective Action at Finite Temperature: Two-Loop Dominance},
author = {Holger Gies},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-ph/9909500},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
34 pages, 4 figures, LaTeX