Physics Commons^™

Microphysical Approach To Nonequilibrium Dynamics Of Quantum Fields, Marcelo Gleiser, Rudnei O. Ramos

Dartmouth Scholarship

We examine the nonequilibrium dynamics of a self-interacting λφ4 scalar field theory. Using a real time formulation of finite temperature field theory we derive, up to two loops and O(λ2), the effective equation of motion describing the approach to equilibrium. We present a detailed analysis of the approxi- mations used in order to obtain a Langevin-like equation of motion, in which the noise and dissipation terms associated with quantum fluctuations obey a fluctuation-dissipation relation. We show that, in general, the noise is colored (time-dependent) and multiplicative (couples nonlinearly to the field), even though it is still Gaussian distributed. The noise …