Kinetic theory of QED plasma in a strong electromagnetic field I. The covariant hyperplane formalism

We develop a covariant density matrix approach to kinetic theory of QED plasmas subjected into a strong external electromagnetic field. A canonical quantization of the system on space-like hyperplanes in Minkowski space and a covariant generalization of the Coulomb gauge is used. The condensate mode associated with the mean electromagnetic field is separated from the photon degrees of freedom by a time-dependent unitary transformation of both, the dynamical variables and the nonequilibrium statistical operator. Therefore even in the case of strong external fields a perturbative expansion in orders of the fine structure constant for the correlation functions as well as the statistical operator is applicable. A general scheme for deriving kinetic equations in the hyperplane formalism is presented.