Thermal quantum electrodynamics of nonrelativistic charged fluids

Abstract

The theory relevant to the study of matter in equilibrium with the radiation field is thermal quantum electrodynamics (TQED). We present a formulation of the theory, suitable for non relativistic fluids, based on a joint functional integral representation of matter and field variables. In this formalism cluster expansion techniques of classical statistical mechanics become operative. They provide an alternative to the usual Feynman diagrammatics in many-body problems which is not perturbative with respect to the coupling constant. As an application we show that the effective Coulomb interaction between quantum charges is partially screened by thermalized photons at large distances. More precisely one observes an exact cancellation of the dipolar electric part of the interaction, so that the asymptotic particle density correlation is now determined by relativistic effects. It has still the $r^{-6}$ decay typical for quantum charges, but with an amplitude strongly reduced by a relativistic factor.

32 pages, 0 figures. 2nd version

References in corpus (6)

• Coulomb systems at low density
• The Casimir force at high temperature
• The thermodynamic limit for matter interacting with Coulomb forces and with the quantized electromagnetic field: I. The lower bound
• Equilibrium correlations in charged fluids coupled to the radiation field
• Dielectric versus conductive behaviour in quantum gases: exact results for the hydrogen plasma
• Electric-field correlations in quantum charged fluids coupled to the radiation field

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Microscopic theory of the Casimir force at thermal equilibrium: large-separation asymptotics
• Analytical and Numerical Demonstration of How the Drude Dispersive Model Satisfies Nernst's Theorem for the Casimir Entropy
• Atom-wall dispersive forces: a microscopic approach
• Charge and Current Sum Rules in Quantum Media Coupled to Radiation
• Quantum kinetic theory of flux-carrying Brownian particles