It is shown that the path-ordered formalism and thermo field dynamics (TFD) give equivalent results in the perturbation formulation of nonequilibrium phenomena. The thermal state condition in TFD is the key relation to connect the time-ordered product with the anti-time-ordered product.
The generating functional formulation of non-equilibrium thermo field dynamics (NETFD) is given. The results are compared with those obtained by Schwinger who introduced the forward and backward time axes in order to include the dissipation effect. The relation of NETFD to other closed time-path formalisms is also given. As NETFD is an operator formalism of quantum field theory for non-equilibrium situations, one can say that the usual Green's function formalisms are well founded by NETFD through the comparison given in this paper.
We present a comprehensive review of the most fundamental and practical aspects of thermo-field dynamics (TFD), including some of the most recent developments in the field. To make TFD fully consistent, some suitable changes in the structure of the thermal doublets and the Bogoliubov transformation matrices have been made. A close comparison between TFD and the Schwinger-Keldysh closed time path formalism (SKF) is presented. We find that TFD and SKF are in many ways the same in form; in particular, the two approaches are identical in stationary situations. However, TFD and SKF are quite different in time-dependent nonequilibrium situations. The main source of this difference is that the time evolution of the density matrix itself is ignored in SKF while in TFD it is replaced by a time-dependent Bogoliubov transformation. In this sense TFD is a better candidate for time-dependent quantum field theory. Even in equilibrium situations, TFD has some remarkable advantages over the Matsubara approach and SKF, the most notable being the Feynman diagram recipes, which we will present. We will show that the calculations of two-point functions are simplified, instead of being complicated, by the matrix nature of the formalism. We will present some explicit calculations using TFD, including space-time inhomogeneous situations and the vacuum polarization in equilibrium relativistic QED.
In this paper the so-called α degree of freedom appearing in thermal quantum field theory is discussed, using thermo field dynamics (TFD). This paper is confined to stationary thermal situations, both nonequilibrium and equilibrium. The main result is that when the stationary number distribution differs from the equilibrium one the use of time ordered and antitime ordered formalisms picks up α=1 and α=0, in contrast to the general belief that the Feynman diagram method is usable for any other α as well. This situation in TFD will be compared with the other approaches. The reason why the Feynman diagram method becomes available for any α in the case of the equilibrium distributions is also studied.
A fundamental framework for the construction of a quantum field theory for open systems, which will be called non-equilibrium thermo field dynamics (NETFD), is built upon two concepts. One is the thermal state in the thermal-Liouville space, by which the quasi-particle superoperator is introduced generally from the thermal state condition. The other is the coarse graining which is realized by projecting out some partial space from the complete thermal-Liouville space, and by which the dissipation is introduced. Most properties of the usual quantum field theory (e.g., the operator formalism, the time-ordered formulation of the Green’s functions, the Feynman diagram method in real time, etc.) are preserved in NETFD. The entropy for the nonequilibrium state can be also introduced in NETFD.