Proper-time evaluation of the effective action: Unequal masses in the loop
A. A. Osipov (Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Bogoliubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, 141980 Dubna, Russia)
The Fock-Schwinger proper-time method is used to derive the effective action in the field theory with the chiral symmetry explicitly broken by unequal masses of heavy particles. The one-loop effective action is presented as a series in inverse powers of heavy masses. The first two Seeley-DeWitt coefficients of this expansion are explicitly calculated. This powerful technique opens a promising avenue for studying explicit flavor symmetry-breaking effects in the effective field theories.