Micro, macro and thermal concepts in quantum field theory

Abstract

Abstract This paper has two aims: to provide a physical background of thermo field dynamics (TFD) and to present a review of the recent development of TFD. Macroscopic and thermal phenomena are considered from the unified viewpoint of microscopic quantum field theory. The concepts in quantum field theory such as renormalization and quasi-particles force us to take account of the time-dependence of the trace sum which has been ignored in the usual treatment of thermal situation. It is within this context that we review TFD. The applications of TFD to time-dependent non-equilibrium phenomena (the reservoir model and the self-interacting field model), show that we can obtain the master equation as well as the dissipative coefficient from the self-consistent renormalization condition. At the same time it is also shown that the final Gibbs distribution and the temperature can be derived, which implies that we obtain the equilibrium theory from the non-equilibrium one at the long-time limit.