Two-loop corrections to the topological mass term in thermal QED 3

Abstract

We study the radiative corrections to the Chern–Simons mass term at two loops in (2+1)-dimensional quantum electrodynamics at finite temperature. We show that, in contrast to the behavior at zero temperature, thermal effects lead to a non-vanishing contribution at this order. Using this result, as well as the large gauge Ward identity for the leading parity violating terms in the static limit, we determine the leading order parity violating effective action in this limit at two loops, which generalizes the one-loop effective action proposed earlier.