Quantum effective action for degenerate vector field theories
Abstract
We calculate the divergent part of the one-loop effective action in curved spacetime for a particular class of second-order vector field operators with a degenerate principal part. The principal symbol of these operators has the structure of a longitudinal projector. In this case, standard heat-kernel techniques are not directly applicable. We present a method which reduces the problem to a nondegenerate scalar operator for which standard heat-kernel techniques are available. Interestingly, this method leads to the identification of an effective metric structure in the longitudinal sector. The one-loop divergences are compactly expressed in terms of invariants constructed from this metric.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1809.04601,
title = {Quantum effective action for degenerate vector field theories},
author = {Michael S. Ruf and Christian F. Steinwachs},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1809.04601},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
6 pages, no figures; typos corrected, references added, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D