Effective field theory in background field gauge

Abstract

It is shown how to construct effective lagrangians to the two-loop level for non-abelian gauge theories, quantized in background field gauge. This construction is no more difficult than the analogous computation in abelian gauge theories when minimal subtraction is employed. It is argued that for three or more loops, one can no longer separate heavy or mixed light-heavy graphs in an intermediate renormalization, and the more general algorithm presented by us in an earlier work must be employed even in background field gauge.