Propagator of a massive charged vector boson in a magnetic field: Ritus eigenfunction method

TL;DR

This paper derives the propagator for a massive charged vector boson in a magnetic field using the Ritus eigenfunction method, enabling detailed analysis of Landau levels and spin effects, with applications to quantum corrections.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic derivation of the vector boson propagator in a magnetic field using Ritus eigenfunctions, including LSZ formula and connections to Schwinger representations.

Findings

Explicit form of the propagator in Landau levels.

Formulation of LSZ reduction for charged vector bosons.

Identification of discrepancies in previous Schwinger phase results.

Abstract

In this work, we derive the propagator of a massive charged vector boson in the presence of a homogeneous and constant magnetic field of arbitrary strength, working in the unitary gauge and in the mostly minus metric. The propagator is constructed using the Ritus eigenfunction method, which allows for an explicit treatment of Landau-level quantization and spin degrees of freedom. We present a detailed analysis of the polarization vectors for all Landau levels. Using the Ritus representation, we formulate and derive the LSZ reduction formula for massive charged vector bosons in a magnetic field background, providing a useful tool for the calculation of self-energies and radiative corrections with external charged states. Furthermore, we establish a systematic connection between the Ritus' eigenfunctions and Schwinger proper-time representations of the propagator, identifying Schwinger's phase and exhibiting a slight discrepancy with previous results in the literature that arise in the unitary gauge, highlighting the importance of a careful treatment of spin and gauge structures in an external magnetic field.