Full mass range analysis of the QED effective action for an O(2)xO(3) symmetric field

Understand

An interesting class of background field configurations in quantum electrodynamics (QED) are the O(2)xO(3) symmetric fields, originally introduced by S.L.

• Adler in 1972.
• Those backgrounds have some instanton-like properties and yield a one-loop effective action that is highly nontrivial, but amenable to numerical calculation.
• Here, we use the recently developed "partial-wave-cutoff method" for a full mass range numerical analysis of the effective action for the "standard" O(2)xO(3) symmetric field, modified by a radial suppression factor.