Loop contribution to inflationary magnetic field

Abstract

Within the framework of the standard quantum electrodynamics, we compute contribution of vacuum polarization at one-loop order to the power spectrum of the magnetic field on inflationary (de Sitter) background. It is found that the one-loop term exhibits the infrared secular growth that is proportional to the number of $e$-folds. The use of the dynamical renormalization group method, which amounts to partial resummation of higher loop diagrams, shows that the resummed power spectrum is free from the secular growth and the loop effect only changes the power from $(k/a)^4$ at the tree level to ${(k/a)}^{4-\nu}$, where $\nu$ represents the contribution from vacuum polarization. The parameter $\nu$, being proportional to the square of the gauge coupling constant as well as the number of fermion species, is a simple function of a ratio of fermion mass to the Hubble parameter and is positive irrespective of the fermion mass. Thus, the loop effect always enhances the infrared magnetic field strength. We find that $\nu \simeq 5 \times 10^{-3}$ is the possible maximum contribution to $\nu$ from a single fermion. This estimate suggests that either large number of fermion species or large coupling constant is a necessary condition for the loop effect to be responsible for the seed of the cosmic magnetic fields.