Introduction to Thermal Field Theory: From First Principles to Applications

Abstract

This review article provides the basics and discusses some important applications of thermal field theory, namely the combination of statistical mechanics and relativistic quantum field theory. In a first part the fundamentals are covered: the density matrix, the corresponding averages and the treatment of fields of various spin in a medium. A second part is dedicated to the computation of thermal Green's function for scalars, vectors and fermions with path-integral methods. These functions play a crucial role in thermal field theory, as explained here. A more applicative part of the review is dedicated to the production of particles in a medium and to phase transitions in field theory, including the process of vacuum decay in a general theory featuring a first-order phase transition. To understand this review, the reader should only have a good knowledge of non-statistical quantum field theory.

Comments: 69 pages, 4 figures, review article invited by Universe, based on Ph.D. lectures given by the author in the spring of 2023 at the University of Rome Tor Vergata; v2: title extended, few clarifying sentences and references added