Anatomy of one-loop effective action in non-commutative scalar field theories

The one-loop effective action of non-commutative scalar field theory with cubic self-interaction is studied. Utilizing the worldline formulation, both the planar and non-planar parts of the effective action are computed explicitly. We find complete agreement of the result with the Seiberg–Witten limit of a string worldsheet computation and with the standard Feynman diagrammatics. We prove that, in the low-energy and large non-commutativity limit, the non-planar part of the effective action is simplified enormously and is resummable into a quadratic action of scalar open Wilson line operators. Received: 22 July 2001 / Revised version: 19 October 2001 / Published online: 7 December 2001