Emergence of Temperature in Examples and Related Nuisances in Field Theory

Angebote / Angebote:

Field theory, relying on the concept of continuous space and time while confronted with the quantum physical nature of observable quantities, still has some fundamental challenges to face. One of these challenges is to understand the emergence of complexity. Complexity in the behavior of interacting elementary fields, realized in nontrivial phase structures of elementary matter at high energy density as well as in unusual statistical properties - such as a temperature proportional to a constant acceleration in a homogeneous gravitation field - constitutes problems which call for explanations at the fundamental level. Most modern textbooks on thermal field theory are mainly concerned with how the field theory formalism should be used if a finite temperature is given. In contrast, this short primer explores how the phenomenon of temperature emerges physically for elementary fields - what is the underlying kinetic field theory, how should the fluctuations of energy and other noise be handled - and investigates whether and how this harmonizes with traditional field theory concepts like renormalization, spectral evolution and phase transitions