Generalized heat kernel coefficients

Abstract

Following Osipov and Hiller, a generalized heat kernel expansion is considered for the effective action of bosonic operators. In this generalization, the standard heat kernel expansion, which counts inverse powers of a c-number mass parameter, is extended by allowing the mass to be a matrix in flavor space. We show that the generalized heat kernel coefficients can be related to the standard ones in a simple way. This holds with or without trace and integration over spacetime, to all orders and for general flavor spaces. Gauge invariance is manifest.