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Quantum Fields In Extreme Backgrounds, Leandro Medina De Oliveira

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Quantum field theories behave in interesting and nontrivial ways in the presence of intense electric and/or magnetic fields. Describing such behavior correctly, particularly at finite (nonzero) temperature and density, is of importance for particle physics, nuclear physics, astrophysics, condensed matter physics, and cosmology. Incorporating these conditions as external parameters also provides useful probes into the nonperturbative structure of gauge theories.

In this work, formalism for describing matter in a variety of extreme conditions is developed and implemented. We develop several expansions of one-loop finite temperature effects for spinor particles in the presence of magnetic fields, including the effects of confinement, …