Physics – High Energy Physics – High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Scientific paper
2004-09-20
AIP Conf.Proc.739:3-62,2005
Physics
High Energy Physics
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
131 pages, figures
Scientific paper
10.1063/1.1843591
There has been substantial progress in recent years in the quantitative understanding of the nonequilibrium time evolution of quantum fields. Important topical applications, in particular in high energy particle physics and cosmology, involve dynamics of quantum fields far away from the ground state or thermal equilibrium. In these cases, standard approaches based on small deviations from equilibrium, or on a sufficient homogeneity in time underlying kinetic descriptions, are not applicable. A particular challenge is to connect the far-from-equilibrium dynamics at early times with the approach to thermal equilibrium at late times. Understanding the ``link'' between the early- and the late-time behavior of quantum fields is crucial for a wide range of phenomena. For the first time questions such as the explosive particle production at the end of the inflationary universe, including the subsequent process of thermalization, can be addressed in quantum field theory from first principles. The progress in this field is based on efficient functional integral techniques, so-called n-particle irreducible effective actions, for which powerful nonperturbative approximation schemes are available. Here we give an introduction to these techniques and show how they can be applied in practice. Though we focus on particle physics and cosmology applications, we emphasize that these techniques can be equally applied to other nonequilibrium phenomena in complex many body systems.
No associations
LandOfFree
Introduction to Nonequilibrium Quantum Field Theory does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Introduction to Nonequilibrium Quantum Field Theory, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Introduction to Nonequilibrium Quantum Field Theory will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-42087