Exact Effective Action for (1+1 Dimensional) Fermions in an Abelian Background at Finite Temperature

Abstract

In an effort to further understand the structure of effective actions for fermions in an external gauge background at finite temperature, we study the example of 1+1 dimensional fermions interacting with an arbitrary Abelian gauge field. We evaluate the effective action exactly at finite temperature. This effective action is non-analytic as is expected at finite temperature. However, contrary to the structure at zero temperature and contrary to naive expectations, the effective action at finite temperature has interactions to all (even) orders (which, however, do not lead to any quantum corrections). The covariant structure thus obtained may prove useful in studying 2+1 dimensional models in arbitrary backgrounds. We also comment briefly on the solubility of various 1+1 dimensional models at finite temperature.