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In this article, we analyze the fundamental global and local symmetries involved in the action for the free relativistic point particle in Minkowski space. Moreover, we identify a hidden local symmetry, whose explicit consideration and factorization utilizing of a Fujikawa prescription leads to the construction of relativistic two-point correlation functions that satisfy the Chapman-Kolmogorov identity. By means of a detailed topological analysis, we find three different relativistic correlation functions (orthochronous, spacelike, and Feynman) which are obtained from the exclusive integration of paths within different sectors in Minkowski space. Finally, the connection of this approach to the Feynman checkerboard construction is explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Symmetries are essential for a consistent formulation of many quantum systems. In this paper we discuss a fundamental symmetry, which is present for any Lagrangian term that involves x². As a basic model that incorporates the fundamental symmetries of quantum gravity and string theory, we consider the Lagrangian action of the relativistic point particle. A path integral quantization for this seemingly simple system has long presented notorious problems. Here we show that those problems are overcome by taking into account the additional symmetry, leading directly to the exact Klein-Gordon propagator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We revisit the calculation of the fermion self-energy in QED in the presence of a magnetic field. We show that, after carrying out the renormalization procedure and identifying the most general perturbative tensor structure for the modified fermion mass operator in the large field limit, the mass develops an imaginary part. This happens when account is made of the subleading contributions associated to Landau levels other than the lowest one. The imaginary part is associated to a spectral density describing the spread of the mass function in momentum. The center of the distribution corresponds to the magnetic-field modified mass. The width becomes small as the field intensity increases in such a way that for asymptotically large values of the field, when the separation between Landau levels becomes also large, the mass function describes a stable particle occupying only the lowest Landau level. For large but finite values of the magnetic field, the spectral density represents a finite probability for the fermion to occupy Landau levels other than the lowest Landau level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an analytic method to compute the one-loop magnetic correction to the gluon polarization tensor starting from the Landau-level representation of the quark propagator in the presence of an external magnetic field. We show that the general expression contains the vacuum contribution that can be isolated from the zero-field limit for finite gluon momentum. The general tensor structure for the gluon polarization also contains two spurious terms that do not satisfy the transversality properties. However, we also show that the coefficients of these structures vanish and thus do not contribute to the polarization tensor, as expected. In order to check the validity of the expressions we study the strong and weak field limits and show that in the former, the well-established result is reproduced. The findings can be used to study the conditions for gluons to equilibrate with the magnetic field produced during the early stages of a relativistic heavy-ion collision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]