Heisenberg-Euler Effective Lagrangians : Basics and Extensions

Abstract

I present a pedagogical review of Heisenberg-Euler effective Lagrangians, beginning with the original work of Heisenberg and Euler, and Weisskopf, for the one loop effective action of quantum electrodynamics in a constant electromagnetic background field, and then summarizing some of the important applications and generalizations to inhomogeneous background fields, nonabelian backgrounds, and higher loop effective Lagrangians.

Comments: 82 pages; to appear in Ian Kogan Memorial Collection, ``From Fields to Strings: Circumnavigating Theoretical Physics''