nLab effective action functional

Contents

this entry is about the concept in quantum field theory, for the concept in group theory/representation theory see at effective group action; for disambiguation see effective action

Context

Algebraic Quantum Field Theory

algebraic quantum field theory (perturbative, on curved spacetimes, homotopical)

Introduction

Concepts

field theory:

Lagrangian field theory

quantization

quantum mechanical system, quantum probability

free field quantization

gauge theories

interacting field quantization

renormalization

Theorems

States and observables

Operator algebra

Local QFT

Perturbative QFT

Contents

Idea

In the context of (perturbative) quantum field theory an effective action is an object obtained from a more fundamental (interaction) action functional by “averaging out” certain dependencies.

Details

References

A discussion (with an eye towards supersymmetric quantum field theory and Seiberg duality) is in section 2.1 of

  • Flip Tanedo, Notes on Seibergology (pdf)

A review of effective actions in the background field formalism is in section 3.1 of

  • Darren Trevor Grasso, Higher order contributions to the effective action of 𝒩=2\mathcal{N} = 2 and 44 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories from heat kernel techniques in superspace Thesis (2007) (web)

In the context of the BV-BRST formalism see e.g.

Last revised on August 10, 2024 at 16:39:17. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.