Kubo estimation of the electrical conductivity for a hot relativistic fluid in the presence of a magnetic field

TL;DR

This paper uses the Kubo formalism to analyze the electrical conductivity of relativistic fluids in magnetic fields, revealing quantum effects absent in classical relaxation time approximations, with implications for understanding quantum transport phenomena.

Contribution

It provides a detailed quantum field theoretical calculation of conductivity in magnetic fields, highlighting discrepancies with RTA and interpreting Landau quantization effects.

Findings

Parallel conductivity decreases or increases with magnetic field depending on the medium.

Perpendicular conductivity involves Landau level differences, indicating quantum transport mechanisms.

Quantum effects significantly alter conductivity behavior compared to classical approximations.

Abstract

We have explored the multi-component structure of electrical conductivity of relativistic Fermionic and Bosonic fluid in presence of magnetic field by using Kubo approach. This is done by explicitly evaluating the thermo-magnetic vector current spectral functions using the real time formalism of finite temperature field theory and the Schwinger proper time formalism. In absence of magnetic field, the one-loop diagramatic representation of Kubo expression of any transport coefficients is exactly same with relaxation time approximation (RTA) based expression, but this equality does not hold for finite magnetic field picture due to lacking of proper implementation of quantum effect in latter approach. We have shown this discrepancy for particular transport coefficient - electrical conductivity, whose starting point in Kubo approach will be electromagnetic current-current correlator and its one-loop skeleton diagram carrying two scalar/Dirac propagators for scalar/Dirac fluid. Through a numerical comparison between RTA and Kubo expressions of conductivity components (parallel and perpendicular), we have attempted to interpret detail quantum field theoretical effect, contained by Kubo expression but not by RTA expression. In classical RTA expression we get magnetic field independent parallel conductivity due to zero Lorentz force but in field theoretical Kubo expression, it decreases and increases with the magnetic field for scalar and Dirac medium respectively due to Landau quantization effect. This parallel component of conductivity can be interpreted as zero momentum limit of quantum fluctuation with same Landau level internal lines. While for perpendicular component of conductivity, fluctuation with Landau level differences $\pm 1$ are noticed, which might be a new realization of transportation in field theoretical sector.