Strong-field resummed heat kernels and effective actions: inhomogeneous fields

TL;DR

This paper develops resummed heat kernel expressions for a quantum scalar field in strong, inhomogeneous background fields, enabling analysis of pair creation effects and suggesting broader applicability of resummation techniques.

Contribution

It introduces a method to obtain resummed heat kernels and effective actions for scalar fields in strong, inhomogeneous backgrounds, extending previous approaches.

Findings

Resummed heat kernels derived for strong, inhomogeneous fields.

Effective actions constructed from resummed kernels.

Discussion on pair creation effects in strong fields.

Abstract

We study the strong-field limit of a theory involving a quantum scalar field coupled to a vector background, which can be either an electromagnetic field or a non-gauge field coupled through the first derivative term. Our approach consists in obtaining resummed expressions for the associated heat kernels, from which we derive the corresponding resummed effective actions. These results allow us to discuss the effect of pair creation. Finally, we conjecture that resummations for more general theories should be possible.