Nonequilibrium Quantum Field Theory

, by Esteban A. Calzetta , Bei-Lok B. Hu

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ISBN: 9780521641685 | 0521641683
Cover: Hardcover
Copyright: 10/6/2008

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Research into the nonequilibrium processes of quantum many body systems, and the statistical mechanical properties of interacting quantum fields, constitutes a fast developing and widely applicable area of theoretical physics.

Preface	p. xiii
Fundamentals of Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics
Basic issues in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics	p. 3
Macroscopic description of physical processes	p. 4
Microscopic characterization from dynamical systems behavior	p. 11
Physical conditions	p. 16
Coarse graining and persistent structure in the physical world	p. 21
Physical systems: Closed, open, effectively closed and effectively open	p. 26
Appendix A: Stochastic processes and equations in a (tiny) nutshell	p. 31
Relaxation, dissipation, noise and fluctuations	p. 39
A simple model of Brownian motion	p. 39
The Fokker-Planck and Kramers-Moyal equations	p. 45
The Boltzmann equation	p. 49
Quantum open systems	p. 60
A quick review of quantum mechanics	p. 60
Influence functional	p. 68
The master equation	p. 72
The Langevin equation	p. 73
The Kramers-Moyal equation	p. 79
Derivation of the propagator and the master equation	p. 82
Consistent histories and decoherence functional	p. 86
Basics of Nonequilibrium Quantum Field Theory
Quantum fields on time-dependent backgrounds: Particle creation	p. 93
Basic field theory	p. 94
Particle production in external fields	p. 106
Spontaneous and stimulated production	p. 111
Quantum Vlasov equation	p. 114
Periodically driven fields	p. 118
Particle creation in a dynamical spacetime	p. 121
Particle creation as squeezing	p. 131
Squeezed quantum open systems	p. 143
Open systems of interacting quantum fields	p. 148
Influence functional: Two interacting quantum fields	p. 149
Quantum functional master equation	p. 158
The closed time path coarse-grained effective action	p. 162
Functional methods in nonequilibrium QFT	p. 170
Propagators	p. 171
Functional methods	p. 174
The closed time path effective action	p. 180
Computing the closed time path effective action	p. 187
The two-particle irreducible effective action	p. 195
Handling divergences	p. 203
Gauge Invariance, Dissipation, Entropy, Noise and Decoherence
Closed time path effective action for gauge theories	p. 211
Path integral quantization of gauge theories - an overview	p. 214
The 2PI formalism applied to gauge theories	p. 223
Gauge dependence and propagator structure	p. 226
Dissipation and noise in mean field dynamics	p. 231
Preliminaries	p. 234
Dissipation in the mean field dynamics	p. 235
Dissipation and particle creation	p. 236
Particle creation and noise	p. 238
Full quantum correlations from the Langevin approach	p. 240
The fluctuation-dissipation theorem	p. 242
Particle creation and decoherence	p. 243
The nonlinear regime	p. 244
Final remarks	p. 249
Entropy generation and decoherence of quantum fields	p. 251
Entropy generation from particle creation	p. 251
Entropy of quantum fields	p. 255
Entropy from the (apparent) damping of the mean field	p. 258
Entropy of squeezed quantum open systems	p. 262
Decoherence in a quantum phase transition	p. 270
Spinodal decomposition of an interacting quantum field	p. 274
Decoherence of the inflaton field	p. 281
Thermal, Kinetic and Hydrodynamic Regimes
Thermal field and linear response theory	p. 291
The thermal generating functional	p. 291
Linear response theory	p. 293
The Kubo-Martin-Schwinger theorem	p. 294
Thermal self-energy: Screening	p. 297
Landau damping	p. 298
Hard thermal loops	p. 305
Quantum kinetic field theory	p. 315
The Kadanoff-Baym equations	p. 315
Quantum kinetic field theory on nontrivial backgrounds	p. 330
Hydrodynamics and thermalization	p. 345
Classical relativistic hydrodynamics	p. 346
Quantum fields in the hydrodynamic limit	p. 353
Transport functions in the hydrodynamic limit	p. 360
Transport functions from linear response theory	p. 367
Thermalization	p. 374
Applications to Selected Current Research
Nonequilibrium Bose-Einstein condensates	p. 391
The closed time path integral approach to BECs	p. 393
The symmetry-breaking approach to BECs	p. 396
The particle number conserving formalism	p. 420
Nonequilibrium issues in RHICs and DCCs	p. 429
Relativistic heavy ion collisions (RHICs)	p. 429
Disoriented chiral condensates (DCCs)	p. 439
Nonequilibrium quantum processes in the early universe	p. 447
Quantum fluctuations and noise in inflationary cosmology	p. 448
Structure formation: Effect of colored noise	p. 457
Reheating in the inflationary universe	p. 474
References	p. 490
Index	p. 530
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Nonequilibrium Quantum Field Theory

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