https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-009-1179-8
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Quantum extremism: effective potential and extremal paths
1
Institute of Nuclear Physics, NCSR “Demokritos”, Athens, Greece
2
IMAPP, FNWI, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
* e-mail: M.vanKessel@science.ru.nl
Received:
7
July
2009
Published online:
4
November
2009
The reality and convexity of the effective potential in quantum field theories has been studied extensively in the context of Euclidean space-time. It has been shown that canonical and path-integral approaches may yield different results, thus resolving the convexity problem. We discuss the transferal of these treatments to Minkowskian space-time, which also necessitates a careful discussion of precisely which field configurations give the dominant contributions to the path integral. In particular, we study the effective potential for the N=1 linear sigma model.
© Springer-Verlag , 2010
