Renormalization of the QED of self-interacting second order spin 1/2 fermions

Abstract

We study the one-loop level renormalization of the electrodynamics of spin 1/2 fermions in the Poincar\'e projector formalism, in arbitrary covariant gauge and including fermion self-interactions, which are dimension four operators in this framework. We show that the model is renormalizable for arbitrary values of the tree level gyromagnetic factor g within the validity region of the perturbative expansion, \alpha g^2 << 1. In the absence of tree level fermion self-interactions, we recover the pure QED of second order fermions, which is renormalizable only for |g|=2. Turning off the electromagnetic interaction we obtain a renormalizable Nambu-Jona-Lasinio-like model with second order fermions in four space-time dimensions.