Strong-field physics in QED and QCD: From fundamentals to applications

Abstract

We provide a pedagogical review article on fundamentals and applications of the quantum dynamics in strong electromagnetic fields in QED and QCD. The fundamentals include the basic picture of the Landau quantization and the resummation techniques applied to the class of higher-order diagrams that are enhanced by large magnitudes of the external fields. We then discuss observable effects of the vacuum fluctuations in the presence of the strong fields, which consist of the interdisciplinary research field of nonlinear QED. We also discuss extensions of the Heisenberg–Euler effective theory to finite temperature/density and to non-Abelian theories with some applications. Next, we proceed to the paradigm of the dimensional reduction emerging in the low-energy dynamics in the strong magnetic fields. The mechanisms of superconductivity, the magnetic catalysis of the chiral symmetry breaking, and the Kondo effect are addressed from a unified point of view in terms of the renormalization-group method. We provide an up-to-date summary of the lattice QCD simulations in magnetic fields for the chiral symmetry breaking and the related topics as of the end of 2022. Finally, we discuss novel transport phenomena induced by chiral anomaly and the axial-charge dynamics. Those discussions are supported by a number of appendices.