https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-020-08498-3
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Infrared finiteness of a complete theory of charged scalars and fermions at finite temperature
1
The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, India
2
Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai, India
3
Department of Physics and Astrophysics, University of Delhi, 110 007, Delhi, India
Received:
20
December
2018
Accepted:
26
September
2020
Published online:
21
October
2020
It is known that the infrared (IR) divergences accruing from pure fermion–photon interactions at finite temperature cancel to all orders in perturbation theory. The corresponding infrared finiteness of scalar thermal QED has also been established recently. Here, we study the IR behaviour, at finite temperature, of theories where charged scalars and fermions interact with neutrals that could potentially be dark matter candidates. Such thermal field theories contain both linear and sub-leading logarithmic divergences. We prove that the theory is IR-finite to all orders in perturbation, with the divergences cancelling order by order between virtual and real photon corrections, when both absorption and emission of photons from and into the heat bath are taken into account. The calculation follows closely the technique used by Grammer and Yennie for zero temperature field theory. The result is generic and applicable to a variety of models, independent of the specific form of the neutral-fermion–scalar interaction vertex.
© The Author(s) 2020
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Funded by SCOAP3