Radiative corrections to fermion matter and nontopological solitons

This thesis addresses the effects of one loop radiative corrections to fermion matter and nontopological solitons. The effective action formalism is employed to explore the effects of these corrections on the ground state energy and scalar field expectation value of a system containing valence fermions, which are introduced using a chemical potential. This formalism is discussed extensively, and detailed calculations are presented for the Friedberg-Lee model. The techniques illustrated can be used in any renormalizable field theory and can be extended to include higher order quantum corrections