QED effective actions in inhomogeneous backgrounds: Summing the derivative expansion

The QED effective action encodes nonlinear interactions due to quantum vacuum polarization effects. While much is known for the special case of electrons in a constant electromagnetic field (the Euler-Heisenberg case), much less is known for inhomogeneous backgrounds. Such backgrounds are more relevant to experimental situations. One way to treat inhomogeneous backgrounds is the "derivative expansion", in which one formally expands around the soluble constant-field case. In this talk I use some recent exactly soluble inhomogeneous backgrounds to perform precision tests on the derivative expansion, to learn in what sense it converges or diverges. A closely related question is to find the exponential correction to Schwinger's pair-production formula for a constant electric field, when the electric background is inhomogeneous.

quantum electrodynamics
inhomogeneous media
electric field effects
magnetic field effects
electron pair production
talk: Trieste 2000/10/05
quantum electrodynamics
fermion
effective action
background field

References(21)

Figures(0)

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