Abstract
Starting with Dyson equations for the path-ordered Green’s function, it is shown that the correlation functions for relativistic electrons (positrons) in a weakly coupled non-equilibrium plasmas can be decomposed into sharply peaked quasiparticle parts and off-shell parts in a rather general form. To leading order in the electromagnetic coupling constant, this decomposition yields the extended quasiparticle approximation for the correlation functions, which can be used for the first princi ple calculation of the radiation scattering rates in QED plasmas.
Highlights
There is an undeniable interest in studying QED phenomena in plasmas
It allows one to go beyond the simplest version of the extended quasiparticle approximation by taking the collisional broadening of the quasiparticle spectral function into account
Extended quasiparticle approximation for the correlation functions, which is necessary for description of higher-order processes, such as Bremsstrahlung and Compton scattering in plasmas
Summary
There is an undeniable interest in studying QED phenomena in plasmas. Originally it was motivated by astrophysical problems, but recent progress in laser-plasma experiments shows that a significant number of particles in laboratory plasmas may have ultrarelativistic velocities. To solve the problem of off-shell contributions to the correlation functions, the so-called “extended quasiparticle approximation” was proposed in the context of the non-relativistic Green’s function method [4,5], where the off-shell corrections can be found to lowest order in the quasiparticle damping width. This scheme becomes very complicated in the case of QED plasmas since one has to deal with matrix correlation functions and propagators in spinor space. Our convention for the matrix Green’s functions on the time-loop Schwinger-Keldysh contour follows Botermans and Malfliet [8]
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