Derivative Expansion of the Effective Action for Massless Scalar Electrodynamics in Arbitrary Gauge

TL;DR

This paper uses operator regularization to expand the effective action in derivatives for massless scalar electrodynamics, calculating one-loop corrections and analyzing radiatively induced masses in arbitrary gauges.

Contribution

It introduces a derivative expansion method for the effective action using operator regularization in massless scalar electrodynamics, applicable in any gauge.

Findings

Derived one-loop corrections to kinetic terms for scalar and vector fields

Analyzed radiatively induced masses in the model

Demonstrated gauge independence of the expansion

Abstract

It is shown how operator regularization can be used to obtain an expansion of the effective action in powers of derivatives of the background field. This is applied to massless scalar electrodynamics to find the one-loop corrections to the kinetic terms associated with both the scalar and vector fields in arbitrary gauge. This allows us to examine the radiatively induced masses arising in this model.