Premium
Functional Methods for Arbitrary Densities in Curved Spacetime
Author(s) -
Basler Michael
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
fortschritte der physik/progress of physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.469
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1521-3978
pISSN - 0015-8208
DOI - 10.1002/prop.2190410102
Subject(s) - feynman diagram , spacetime , scalar (mathematics) , functional integration , quantum field theory , quadratic equation , physics , scalar field , lagrangian , scalar field theory , mathematical physics , quantum gravity , theoretical physics , mathematics , classical mechanics , quantum , quantum mechanics , mathematical analysis , integral equation , geometry
This paper gives an introduction to the technique of functional differentiation and integration in curved spacetime, applied to examples from quantum field theory. Special attention is drawn on the choice of functional integral measure. Referring to a suggestion by Toms, fields are choosen as arbitrary scalar, spinorial or vectorial densities. The technique developed by Toms for a pure quadratic Lagrangian are extended to the calculation of the generating functional with external sources. Included are two examples of interacting theories, a self‐interacting scalar field and a Yang‐Mills theory. For these theories the complete set of Feynman graphs depending on the weight of variables is derived.