Heisenberg-Euler effective Lagrangians: Basics and extensions

I present a pedagogical review of Heisenberg-Euler effective Lagrangians, beginning with the original work of Heisenberg and Euler, and Weisskopf, for the one loop effective action of quantum electrodynamics in a constant electromagnetic background field, and then summarizing some of the important applications and generalizations to inhomogeneous background fields, nonabelian backgrounds, and higher loop effective Lagrangians.

Note:

Dedicated to the memory of Ian Kogan •
To appear in Ian Kogan Memorial Collection, 'From Fields to Strings: Circumnavigating Theoretical Physics' •
82 pages; to appear in Ian Kogan Memorial Collection, ``From Fields to Strings: Circumnavigating Theoretical Physics''

review
effective Lagrangian
effective action
perturbation theory: higher-order
higher-order: 2
quantum electrodynamics
background field
approximation: semiclassical
renormalization: beta function
bibliography

References(163)

Figures(1)

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