We develop an approach to investigate the nonperturbative dynamics of quantum field theories, in which specific vacuum field fluctuations are treated as the low-energy dynamical degrees of freedom, while all other vacuum field configurations are explicitly integrated out from the path integral. We show how to compute the effective interaction between the vacuum field degrees of freedom both perturbatively (using stochastic perturbation theory) and fully nonperturbatively (using lattice field theory simulations). The present approach holds to all orders in the couplings and does not rely on the semiclassical approximation.

• Received 30 November 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.81.074019