Representation of spectral functions and thermodynamics

In this paper, we study the question of effective field assignment to measured or nonperturbatively calculated spectral functions. The straightforward procedure is to approximate it by a sum of independent Breit-Wigner resonances and assign an independent field to each of these resonances. The problem with this idea is that it introduces new conserved quantities in the free model (the new particle numbers); therefore it changes the symmetry of the system. We avoid this inconsistency by representing each quantum channel with a single effective field, no matter how complicated the spectral function is. Thermodynamical characterization of the system is computed with this representation method, and its relation to the independent resonance approximation is discussed.