TY - JOUR
T1 - Evolution modes of the vacuum Wigner function in strong-field QED
AU - Białynicki-Birula, I.
AU - Davis, E. D.
AU - Rafelski, J.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work has been supported in part by the US Department of Energy under grant DE-FG02-92ER40733. E.D.D. would like to acknowledge support by the Stellenbosch 2000 Fund, the Alexander yon Humboldt Stiftung and, in the early stages of this work, the National Science Foundation under grant PHY-9103011.
PY - 1993/7/29
Y1 - 1993/7/29
N2 - The physical content of a non-covariant quantum-field theoretic transport formalism for strong-field QED is addressed within an integral formulation of the evolution equations which highlights the relation to acoustic and Zitterbewegung modes of the field-free limit. Through the computation within this framework of the electric susceptibility of the vacuum at the one-loop level, it is established that the off-shell behaviour of the electron-positron field is correctly incorporated. The Zitterbewegung mode is seen to be solely responsible at the one-loop level for vacuum polarization. Implications for the full renormalisation of the theory are taken up.
AB - The physical content of a non-covariant quantum-field theoretic transport formalism for strong-field QED is addressed within an integral formulation of the evolution equations which highlights the relation to acoustic and Zitterbewegung modes of the field-free limit. Through the computation within this framework of the electric susceptibility of the vacuum at the one-loop level, it is established that the off-shell behaviour of the electron-positron field is correctly incorporated. The Zitterbewegung mode is seen to be solely responsible at the one-loop level for vacuum polarization. Implications for the full renormalisation of the theory are taken up.
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U2 - 10.1016/0370-2693(93)90578-6
DO - 10.1016/0370-2693(93)90578-6
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0039981324
SN - 0370-2693
VL - 311
SP - 329
EP - 338
JO - Physics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics
JF - Physics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics
IS - 1-4
ER -