We extend Schwinger's proper-time formalism to provide a method for computing the one-loop effective action for both spinor and scalar quantum electrodynamics in $d=2n>4$ dimensions. We give the closed form expression for the higher-dimensional Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian, and extract its weak-field approximation in 6, 8 and 10 dimensions. A subsequent analysis of pair production in $d$ dimensions is also given. In the $d=6$ case, we present a composite conformal primary field of dimension $+6$ which determines the contribution of the electromagnetic field to the Weyl anomaly in curved space.
The Euler-Heisenberg effective action at the one-loop for a constant electromagnetic field is derived in Krein space quantization with Ford's idea of uctuated light-cone. In this work we present a perturbative, but convergent solution of the effective action. Without using any renormalization procedure, the result coincides with the famous renormalized Euler-Heisenberg action.
High order harmonic generation by extremely intense, interacting, electromagnetic waves in the quantum vacuum is investigated within the framework of the Heisenberg-Euler formalism. Two intersecting plane waves of finite duration are considered in the case of general polarizations. Detailed finite expressions are obtained for the case where only the first Poincaré invariant does not vanish. Yields of high harmonics in this case are most effective.
We review what is presently known about higher loop corrections to the Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian and its Scalar QED analogue. The use of those corrections as a tool for the study of the properties of the QED perturbation series is outlined. As a further step in a long-term effort to prove or disprove the convergence of the N photon amplitudes in the quenched approximation, we present a parameter integral representation of the three-loop Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian in 1+1 dimensional QED, obtained in the worldline formalism.
In recent years, the Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian has been shown to be a useful tool for the analysis of the asymptotic growth of the N-photon amplitudes at large N. Moreover, certain results and conjectures on its imaginary part allow one, using Borel analysis, to make predictions for those amplitudes at large loop orders. Extending work by G.V. Dunne and one of the authors to the three-loop level, but in the simpler context of 1+1 dimensional QED, we calculate the corresponding Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian, analyse its weak field expansion, and study the congruence with predictions obtained fr…
We calculate the lowest-order corrections to the static potential for both the generalized Born-Infeld Electrodynamics and an Euler-Heisenberg-like model, in the presence of a constant external magnetic field. Our analysis is carried out within the framework of the gauge-invariant but path-dependent variables formalism. The calculation reveals a long-range correction ($ {\raise0.7ex\hbox{$1$} \mathord{\left/ {\vphantom {1 {r^5}}}\right.\kern-\nulldelimiterspace} \lower0.7ex\hbox{${r^5}$}}$-type) to the Coulomb potential for the generalized Born-Infeld Electrodynamics. Interestingly enough, in …
An update is given on our long-term effort to perform a three-loop check on the Affleck-Alvarez-Manton/Lebedev-Ritus exponentiation conjecture for the imaginary part of the Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian, using 1+1 dimensional QED as a toy model. After reviewing the history and significance of the conjecture, we present trigonometric integral representations for the single electron loop contributions to the three-loop Lagrangian, and develop a symmetry-based method for the calculation of their weak-field expansion coefficients.
In this paper, we examine the behaviour of the Euler-Heisenberg effective action in the presence of a novel axial coupling among the gauge field and the fermionic matter. This axial coupling is responsible to induce a CP-violating term in the extended form of the Euler-Heisenberg effective action, which is generated naturally through the analysis of the box diagram. However, this anomalous model is not a viable extension of QED, and we explicitly show that the induced CP-violating term in the Euler-Heisenberg effective Lagrangian is obtained only by adding an axial coupling to the ordinary QED…
In this paper, we investigate influences of the charge and angular momentum of a particle around a charged Einstein-Euler-Heisenberg AdS black hole on a Lyapunov exponent, and find spatial regions where the chaos bound is violated. Positions of circular orbits are gotten by fixing the charge and angular momentum of the particle, respectively. The positions gradually move away from the event horizon with the increase of the angular momentum when the charge is fixed and with the decrease of the charge when the angular momentum is fixed. For certain values of the charge, angular momentum and Eule…
On this 75th anniversary of the publication of the Heisenberg-Euler paper on the full non-perturbative one-loop effective action for quantum electrodynamics I review their paper and discuss some of the impact it has had on quantum field theory.
Using a noncommutative inspired Einstein-Euler-Heisenberg black hole, we analyse the associated graviton and light rings that together with the event horizon, provide the necessary components to build its shadow. An analysis of the angular radius of the noncommutative inspired Einstein-Euler-Heisenberg black hole shows that for observers located in its vicinity, it becomes smaller when compared with the commutative case; this effect is more noticeable as noncommutativity increases. The existence of marginally stable bound orbits and the critical angle for the escaping of photons of a noncommut…
We consider Heisenberg-Euler-type model of nonlinear electrodynamics with two parameters. Heisenberg-Euler electrodynamics is a particular case of this model. Corrections to Coulomb's law at $r\rightarrow\infty$ are obtained and energy conditions are studied. The total electrostatic energy of charged particles is finite. The charged black hole solution in the framework of nonlinear electrodynamics is investigated. We find the asymptotic of the metric and mass functions at $r\rightarrow\infty$. Corrections to the Reissner-Nordström solution are obtained.
We study the Einstein-Euler-Heisenberg theory in the presence of a self interacting scalar field, minimally coupled to gravity. We solve analytically the field equations for the magnetically charged case and we obtain novel magnetically charged hairy black holes. The scalar field dresses the black hole with a secondary scalar hair. The hairy black hole develops three horizons when Euler-Heisenberg parameter and the magnetic charge are small and the horizon radius is getting large when the scalar charge and the gravitational mass are large. The presence of matter and the magnetic field outside …
The focus of these lectures is on the quantum vacuum subjected to classical electromagnetic fields. To this end we explicitly derive the renowned Heisenberg-Euler effective action in constant electromagnetic fields in a rather pedagogical and easy to conceive way. As an application, we use it to study vacuum birefringence constituting one of the most promising optical signatures of quantum vacuum nonlinearity.
We study the ground state instability of a strongly coupled QFT with the $z=2$ Schrödinger symmetry in a constant electric field using probe branes holography. The system is $N_f$ $\mathcal{N}=2$ hypermultiplet fermions at zero charge density in the supergravity Schrödinger background. We show that the instability occurs due to Schwinger-like effect and an insulator state will undergo a transition to a conductor state. We calculate the decay rate of instability and pair production probability by using the $gauge/gravity$ duality. At zero temperature for massive fermions, we suggest that the in…
We use a locally constant field approximation (LCFA) to study the one-loop Heisenberg-Euler effective action in a particular class of slowly varying inhomogeneous electric fields of Lorentzian shape with $0\leq d\leq 4$ inhomogeneous directions. We show that for these fields, the LCFA of the Heisenberg-Euler effective action can be represented in terms of a single parameter integral, with the constant field effective Lagrangian with rescaled argument as integration kernel. The imaginary part of the Heisenberg-Euler effective action contains information about the instability of the quantum vacu…
To reveal the Schwinger effect for quarks, i.e., pair creation process of quarks and antiquarks, we derive the vacuum decay rate at strong coupling using AdS/CFT correspondence. Magnetic fields, in addition to the electric field responsible for the pair creation, causes prominent effects on the rate, and is important also in experiments such as RHIC/LHC heavy ion collisions. In this paper, through the gravity dual we obtain the full Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian of N=2 supersymmetric QCD and study the Schwinger mechanism with not only a constant electric field but also a constant magnetic field …
We construct several new classes of black hole (BH) solutions in the context of the mimetic Euler-Heisenberg theory. We separately derive three differently charged BH solutions and their relevant mimetic forms. We show that the asymptotic form of all BH solutions behaves like a flat spacetime. These BHs, either with/without cosmological constant, have the non constant Ricci scalar, due to the contribution of the Euler-Heisenberg parameter, which means that they are not solution to standard or mimetic $f(R)$ gravitational theory without the Euler-Heisenberg non-linear electrodynamics and at the…
In this paper, we examine the CP-violating term of the Euler-Heisenberg action. We focus in the aspects related with the generation of such a term from a QED-like model in terms of the effective action approach. In particular, we show that the generation of the CP-violating term is closely related with both of vector and axial fermionic bilinears. Although, these anomalous models are not a "viable" extension of QED, we argue that the CP-violating term in the photon sector is obtained only from this class of models, and not from any fundamental field theory.
We study the effective interactions of external electromagnetic fields induced by fluctuations of virtual particles in the vacuum of quantum electrodynamics. Our main focus is on these interactions at two-loop order. We discuss in detail the emergence of the renowned Heisenberg-Euler effective action from the underlying microscopic theory of quantum electrodynamics, emphasizing its distinction from a standard one-particle irreducible effective action. In our explicit calculations we limit ourselves to constant and slowly varying external fields, allowing us to adopt a locally constant field ap…
The Euler-Heisenberg action for a $U(1)\times U(1)$ dyon quantum electrodynamics
Instituto de Física, Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad de la República（乌拉圭共和国大学工程学院物理研究所）；Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal de Viçosa（维索萨联邦大学物理系）；Ibitipoca Institute of Physics (IbitiPhys)（伊比蒂波卡物理研究所）
We show that the leading derivative corrections to the Heisenberg-Euler effective action can be determined efficiently from the vacuum polarization tensor evaluated in a homogeneous constant background field. After deriving the explicit parameter-integral representation for the leading derivative corrections in generic electromagnetic fields at one loop, we specialize to the cases of magnetic- and electric-like field configurations characterized by the vanishing of one of the secular invariants of the electromagnetic field. In these cases, closed-form results and the associated all-orders weak…
The main goal of this paper is a direct diagrammatic evaluation of the effective four-photon Lagrangian of the Euler-Heisenberg type for the quantum electrodynamics of massive charged vector bosons. This QED model is naturally embedded in the standard electroweak theory, and we have carried out the corresponding one-loop calculation in the unitary gauge. As far as we know, such a work has not been published before since usually the $R$-gauge techniques are preferred for the computation of loop Feynman diagrams. We have recovered the result obtained many years ago by Vanyashin and Terent'ev, wh…
In this work, we study the radiative generation of the Lorentz-violating Euler-Heisenberg action, in the weak field approximation. For this, we first consider a nonperturbative calculation in the coefficient $c_{μν}$, however, by assuming rotational invariance. Within this approach, we also obtain the results of the amplitude for the photon triple splitting. In the following, we take into account the perturbative approach, where $c_{μν}$ is treated as a insertion in the propagator and a new vertex. The partial results are in fact an expansion up to first order in $c_{μν}$ of the nonperturbativ…
Augmentations to the Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian (QED one-loop effective action in homogeneous electromagnetic fields) under a constant background axial gauge are examined. Two special configurations admit an exact eigendecomposition, and hence effective action as a spectral sum, of the augmented Dirac operator: one with a magnetic field with chiral chemical potential, and the other with an electric field with spatial axial gauge, which resembles an emergent vorticity. An enhancement to Schwinger pair production is found for the latter, which is more fully analyzed using the worldline instanto…
We calculate the exact width for a dark photon decaying to three photons at one loop order for dark photon masses m' below the e+e- production threshold of 2m_e. We find substantial deviations from previous results derived from the lowest order Euler-Heisenberg effective Lagrangian in the range m_e < m' < 2m_e, where higher order terms in the derivative expansion are nonnegligible. This mass range is precisely where the three photon decay takes place on cosmologically relevant timescales. Our improved analysis opens a window for dark photons in the range 850 keV < m' < 2m_e, 10^-5 < epsilon < …
We provide an explicit expression for the strong magnetic field limit of the Heisenberg-Euler effective Lagrangian for both scalar and spinor quantum electrodynamics. To this end, we show that the strong magnetic field behavior is fully determined by one-particle reducible contributions discovered only recently. The latter can efficiently be constructed in an essentially algebraic procedure from lower-order one-particle reducible diagrams. Remarkably, the leading strong magnetic field behavior of the all-loop Heisenberg-Euler effective Lagrangian only requires input from the one-loop Lagrangia…
A generalized Heisenberg-Euler formula is given for an Abelian gauge theory having vector as well as axial vector couplings to a massive fermion. So, the formula is applicable to a parity-violating theory. The gauge group is chosen to be $U(1)$. The formula is quite similar to that in quantum electrodynamics, but there is a complexity in which one factor (related to spin) is expressed in terms of the expectation value. The expectation value is evaluated by the contraction with the one-dimensional propagator in a given background field. The formula affords a basis to the vacuum magnetic birefri…
We continue an effort to obtain information on the QED perturbation series at high loop orders, and particularly on the issue of large cancellations inside gauge invariant classes of graphs, using the example of the l - loop N - photon amplitudes in the limit of large photons numbers and low photon energies. As was previously shown, high-order information on these amplitudes can be obtained from a nonperturbative formula, due to Affleck et al., for the imaginary part of the QED effective lagrangian in a constant field. The procedure uses Borel analysis and leads, under some plausible assumptio…
