Practically linear analogs of the Born-Infeld and other nonlinear theories

I discuss theories that describe fully nonlinear physics, while being practically linear (PL), in that they require solving only linear differential equations. These theories may be interesting in themselves as manageable nonlinear theories. But, they can also be chosen to emulate genuinely nonlinear theories of special interest, for which they can serve as approximations. The idea can be applied to a large class of nonlinear theories, exemplified here with a PL analogs of scalar theories, and of Born-Infeld (BI) electrodynamics. The general class of such PL theories of electromagnetism are governed by a Lagrangian L=-(1/2)F_mnQ^mn+ S(Q_mn), where the electromagnetic field couples to currents in the standard way, while Qmn is an auxiliary field, derived from a vector potential that does not couple directly to currents. By picking a special form of S(Q_mn), we can make such a theory similar in some regards to a given fully nonlinear theory, governed by the Lagrangian -U(F_mn). A particularly felicitous choice is to take S as the Legendre transform of U. For the BI theory, this Legendre transform has the same form as the BI Lagrangian itself. Various matter-of-principle questions remain to be answered regarding such theories. As a specific example, I discuss BI electrostatics in more detail. As an aside, for BI, I derive an exact expression for the short-distance force between two arbitrary point charges of the same sign, in any dimension.Comment: 20 pages, Version published in Phys. Rev.

"Background Field Integration-by-Parts" and the Connection Between One-Loop and Two-Loop Heisenberg-Euler Effective Actions

We develop integration-by-parts rules for Feynman diagrams involving massive scalar propagators in a constant background electromagnetic field, and use these to show that there is a simple diagrammatic interpretation of mass renormalization in the two-loop scalar QED Heisenberg-Euler effective action for a general constant background field. This explains why the square of a one-loop term appears in the renormalized two-loop Heisenberg-Euler effective action. No integrals need be evaluated, and the explicit form of the background field propagators is not needed. This dramatically simplifies the computation of the renormalized two-loop effective action for scalar QED, and generalizes a previous result obtained for self-dual background fields.Comment: 13 pages; uses axodraw.st

Magnetic-field Induced Screening Effect and Collective Excitations

We explicitly construct the fermion propagator in a magnetic field background B to take the lowest Landau-level approximation. We analyze the energy and momentum dependence in the polarization tensor and discuss the collective excitations. We find there appear two branches of collective modes in one of two transverse gauge particles; one represents a massive and attenuated gauge particle and the other behaves similar to the zero sound at finite density.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; references on the zero sound added and typos correcte

Fermion Determinants

The current status of bounds on and limits of fermion determinants in two, three and four dimensions in QED and QCD is reviewed. A new lower bound on the two-dimensional QED determinant is derived. An outline of the demonstration of the continuity of this determinant at zero mass when the background magnetic field flux is zero is also given.Comment: 10 page

On the QED Effective Action in Time Dependent Electric Backgrounds

We apply the resolvent technique to the computation of the QED effective action in time dependent electric field backgrounds. The effective action has both real and imaginary parts, and the imaginary part is related to the pair production probability in such a background. The resolvent technique has been applied previously to spatially inhomogeneous magnetic backgrounds, for which the effective action is real. We explain how dispersion relations connect these two cases, the magnetic case which is essentially perturbative in nature, and the electric case where the imaginary part is nonperturbative. Finally, we use a uniform semiclassical approximation to find an expression for very general time dependence for the background field. This expression is remarkably similar in form to Schwinger's classic result for the constant electric background.Comment: 27 pages, no figures; reference adde

Simplified Vacuum Energy Expressions for Radial Backgrounds and Domain Walls

We extend our previous results of simplified expressions for functional determinants for radial Schr\"odinger operators to the computation of vacuum energy, or mass corrections, for static but spatially radial backgrounds, and for domain wall configurations. Our method is based on the zeta function approach to the Gel'fand-Yaglom theorem, suitably extended to higher dimensional systems on separable manifolds. We find new expressions that are easy to implement numerically, for both zero and nonzero temperature.Comment: 30 page

The Landau problem and noncommutative quantum mechanics

The conditions under which noncommutative quantum mechanics and the Landau problem are equivalent theories is explored. If the potential in noncommutative quantum mechanics is chosen as $V= \Omega \aleph$ with $\aleph$ defined in the text, then for the value ${\tilde \theta} = 0.22 \times 10^{-11} cm^2$ (that measures the noncommutative effects of the space), the Landau problem and noncommutative quantum mechanics are equivalent theories in the lowest Landau level. For other systems one can find differents values for ${\tilde \theta}$ and, therefore, the possible bounds for ${\tilde \theta}$ should be searched in a physical independent scenario. This last fact could explain the differents bounds for $\tilde \theta$ found in the literature.Comment: This a rewritten and corrected version of our previous preprint hep-th/010517

Photoproduction in semiconductors by onset of magnetic field

The energy bands of a semiconductor are lowered by an external magnetic field. When a field is switched on, the straight-line trajectories near the top of the occupied valence band are curved into Landau orbits and Bremsstrahlung is emitted until the electrons have settled in their final Fermi distribution. We calculate the radiated energy, which should be experimentally detectable, and suggest that a semiconductor can be cooled by an oscillating magnetic field

Consistency restrictions on maximal electric field strength in QFT

QFT with an external background can be considered as a consistent model only if backreaction is relatively small with respect to the background. To find the corresponding consistency restrictions on an external electric field and its duration in QED and QCD, we analyze the mean energy density of quantized fields for an arbitrary constant electric field E, acting during a large but finite time T. Using the corresponding asymptotics with respect to the dimensionless parameter $eET^2$, one can see that the leading contributions to the energy are due to the creation of paticles by the electric field. Assuming that these contributions are small in comparison with the energy density of the electric background, we establish the above-mentioned restrictions, which determine, in fact, the time scales from above of depletion of an electric field due to the backreactionComment: 7 pages; version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett.; added one ref. and some comment

The Stokes Phenomenon and Schwinger Vacuum Pair Production in Time-Dependent Laser Pulses

Particle production due to external fields (electric, chromo-electric or gravitational) requires evolving an initial state through an interaction with a time-dependent background, with the rate being computed from a Bogoliubov transformation between the in and out vacua. When the background fields have temporal profiles with sub-structure, a semiclassical analysis of this problem confronts the full subtlety of the Stokes phenomenon: WKB solutions are only local, while the production rate requires global information. Incorporating the Stokes phenomenon, we give a simple quantitative explanation of the recently computed [Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 150404 (2009)] oscillatory momentum spectrum of e+e- pairs produced from vacuum subjected to a time-dependent electric field with sub-cycle laser pulse structure. This approach also explains naturally why for spinor and scalar QED these oscillations are out of phase.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figs.; v2 sign typo corrected, version to appear in PR