Worldline approach to noncommutative field theory

Abstract

The study of the heat-trace expansion in non-commutative field theory has shown the existence of Moyal non-local Seeley–DeWitt coefficients which are related to the UV/IR mixing and manifest, in some cases, the non-renormalizability of the theory. We show that these models can be studied in a worldline approach implemented in phase space and arrive at a master formula for the n-point contribution to the heat-trace expansion. This formulation could be useful in understanding some open problems in this area, as the heat-trace expansion for the non-commutative torus or the introduction of renormalizing terms in the action, as well as for generalizations to other non-local operators.