Worldline images for Yang–Mills theory within boundaries

In this article we develop a worldline technique based on the method of images to study the effective action associated to Yang–Mills theories on manifolds with boundaries. We consider the possibility of having either relative or absolute boundary conditions, which are particular types of mixed boundary conditions. Both vector fields and ghost fields are taken into account in this analysis. As a check of our construction, we compute the first three Seeley–DeWitt coefficients of the heat kernel asymptotics. Finally, we employ our technique to calculate the rate of gluon production due to a chromoelectric field background in the presence of a boundary.