Two-loop corrections to the topological mass term in thermal QED_3

TL;DR

This paper calculates two-loop radiative corrections to the topological mass term in thermal QED_3, revealing thermal effects induce non-zero contributions absent at zero temperature, and derives the leading parity-violating effective action at finite temperature.

Contribution

It provides the first two-loop analysis of the Chern-Simons mass term in thermal QED_3, extending previous one-loop results and incorporating finite temperature effects.

Findings

Thermal effects produce non-zero two-loop corrections to the topological mass.

The leading parity-violating effective action at finite temperature is derived.

Results differ from zero-temperature behavior, highlighting thermal influence on topological terms.

Abstract

We study the radiative corrections to the Chern-Simons mass term at two loops in 2+1 dimensional quantum electrodynamics at finite temperature. We show that, in contrast to the behavior at zero temperature, thermal effects lead to a non vanishing contribution at this order. Using this result, as well as the large gauge Ward identity for the leading parity violating terms in the static limit, we determine the leading order parity violating effective action in this limit at two loops, which generalizes the one-loop effective action proposed earlier.