Analytic results for the effective action

Understand

Motivated by the seminal work of Schwinger, we obtain explicit closed form expressions for the one-loop effective action in a constant electromagnetic field.

• We discuss both massive and massless charged scalars and spinors in two, three, and four dimensions.
• Both strong field and weak field limits are calculable.
• The latter limit results in an asymptotic expansion whose first term reproduces the Euler-Heisenberg effective Lagrangian.