Schwinger's method for the fermionic Casimir effect at finite temperature

The Casimir energy of a massive Dirac field at finite temperature and confined between two parallel infinite plates is computed using a method proposed by Schwinger. The boundary conditions are those of zero current through the plates, as inspired by quark confinement in the MIT bag model for hadrons. We use Schwinger's original regularization by a cutoff in proper-time. We comment on the analytical continuation method of regularization, which allows the employment of Epstein function techniques, and on the different possible expressions for the final answer.     

Schwinger's method for the fermionic Casimir effect

The Casimir energy of a massive Dirac field confined between two parallel infinite plates is computed using a method proposed by Schwinger. The massless case is obtained as a limit of the massive case. The boundary conditions are those of zero current through the plates, as inspired by quark confinement in the MIT bag model for hadrons. We use an analytical continuation method of regularization which allows the employment of Epstein function techniques. The calculation using Schwinger's original regularization by a cutoff in proper time is also outlined.     

Confinement model for quarks

A confinement model of hadron with its constituent quarks bound in a strong gravitational field is presented. The gravitational field plays the role of a medium having, as if, space dependent permeabilities from a fixed centre. The massless Dirac equation modified by the gravitational field is solved. The solution for the wavefunction of the quarks obtained shows the characteristic features of confinement, i.e., (i) wavefunction with higher energy states lying closer to the centre, (ii) equispaced energy levels without continuum, (iii) the quark orbits lying within a distance ∼ 10⁻¹⁴ cm, the characteristic radius of a typical hadron.     

An alternative formulation for the analysis and interpretation of the Dirac hydrogen atom

The second-order radial differential equations for the relativistic Dirac hydrogen atom are derived from the Dirac equation treated as a system of partial differential equations. The quantum operators which arise in the development are defined and interpreted as they appear. The splitting in the energy levels is computed by applying the theory of singularities for second-order differential equations to the Klein-Gordon and Dirac relativistic equations. In the Dirac radial equation additional terms appear containing a constant, which is shown to be the radius of the electron. It is concluded that the minute perturbation of the radial eigenfunction in the vicinity of the proton brought about by the extension of the elementary particles, which appears naturally out of the Dirac equations, results in the prediction of the observed splitting of the hydrogen atom energy levels by the Dirac theory. The extension of the particles arises even though the Dirac hydrogen atom is originally formulated for point charges.     

On the Mass Difference between π and ρ Using a Relativistic Two-Body Model

The big mass difference between the pion (π) and rho meson (ρ) possibly originates from the spin-dependent nature of the interactions in the two states since these two states are similar except for spin. Both π and ρ are quark-antiquark systems which can be treated using the two-body Dirac equations (TBDE) of constraint dynamics. This relativistic approach for two-body system has the advantage over the non-relativistic treatment in the sense that the spin-dependent nature is automatically coming out from the formalism. We employed Dirac’s relativistic constraint dynamics to describe quark-antiquark systems. Within this formalism, the 16-component Dirac equation is reduced to the 4-component 2nd-order differential equation and the radial part of this equation is simply a Schrödinger-type equation with various terms calculated from the basic radial potential. We used a modified Richardson potential for quark-antiquark systems which satisfies the conditions of confinement and asymptotic freedom. We obtained the wave functions for these two mesons which are not singular at short distances. We also found that the cancellation between the Darwin and spin-spin interaction terms occurs in the π mass but not in the ρ mass and this is the main source of the big difference in the two meson masses.     

Colour dielectric model of the proton

A model of the proton with its constituent quarks bound in a colour polarizable medium with dielectric constant varying as (a/r−b ²) from a fixed centre, is presented. The Dirac equation modified by the colour polarization is solved and the analytic expression for the wavefunction of the quarks obtained shows that quarks with higher energy lie closer to the fixed centre. The energy spectrum is equispaced without any continuum. A semiclassical approximation scheme yields closed orbits for quarks which have smaller size for higher energies and no orbits with size bigger than a certain maximum, thereby rendering the quarks permanently confined. The wavefunctions of the three quarks constituting the proton are used to calculate physical parameters of the proton such as its mass, charge radius and weak coupling constant which with suitable choice of the constantsa andb appearing in the dielectric constant agree fairly well with experimental results.     

Radiation Reaction of the Classical Off-Shell Relativistic Charged Particle

It has been shown by Gupta and Padmanabhan that the radiation reaction force of the Abraham–Lorentz–Dirac equation can be obtained by a coordinate transformation from the inertial frame of an accelerating charged particle to that of the laboratory. We show that the problem may be formulated in a flat space of five dimensions, with five corresponding gauge fields in the framework of the classical version of a fully gauge covariant form of the Stueckelberg–Feynman–Schwinger covariant mechanics (the zero mode fields of the 0, 1, 2, 3 components correspond to the Maxwell fields). Without additional constraints, the particles and fields are not confined to their mass shells. We show that in the mass-shell limit, the generalized Lorentz force obtained by means of the retarded Green's functions for the five dimensional field equations provides the classical Abraham–Lorentz–Dirac radiation reaction terms (with renormalized mass and charge). We also obtain general coupled equations for the orbit and the off-shell dynamical mass during the evolution as well as an autonomous non-linear equation of third order for the off-shell mass. The theory does not admit radiation if the particle does not move off-shell. The structure of the equations implies that mass-shell deviation is bounded when the external field is removed.     

Aspects of Solutions of Massive Spin-3/2 Equation in Schwarzschild Space-Time

The general massive spin-(3/2) (Rarita–Schwinger) field equation in Schwarzschild geometry, previously separated by variable separation, is further studied. The orthogonality of the solutions of the angular equations is exploited. The study of the radial equations, that are proposed in the most detailed form, is reduced to the study of four coupled differential equations. The equations are discussed and integrated near the Schwarzschild radius and for zero and large values of the radial coordinate. A covariant product of states is considered that is induced by a conserved current. It is shown the existence of states that are bound in the scalar product without implying the existence of a discrete energy spectrum.     

Classical radiation reaction off-shell corrections to the covariant Lorentz force

We show that the problem of radiation reaction may be formulated in a space of five dimensions, with five corresponding gauge fields in the framework of the classical version of a fully gauge covariant form of the Stueckelberg–Feynman–Schwinger covariant mechanics (the zero mode fields of the 0,1,2,3 components correspond to the Maxwell fields). The particles and fields are not confined to their mass shells. We show that in the mass-shell limit, the generalized Lorentz force obtained by means of the retarded Green's functions for the five-dimensional field equations provides the classical Abraham–Lorentz–Dirac radiation reaction terms (with renormalized mass and charge). We also obtain general coupled equations for the orbit and the off-shell dynamical mass during the evolution as well as an autonomous nonlinear equation of third order for the off-shell mass. The theory does not admit radiation if the particle does not move off-shell. The structure of the equations implies that the mass-shell deviation is bounded when the external field is removed.     

Direct evaluation of baryon numbers of empty chiral bags

Goldstone and Jaffe proved using very general arguments that for a chiral bag surrounded by a Skyrme soliton, the baryon number of the Dirac vacuum inside the bag exactly cancels the (known) baryon number of the soliton outside. Their analysis applies to massless quarks. In order to obtain a formalism easier to generalize to massive quarks, we rederive the result for spherical bags by solving the Dirac equations for the inside of the bag and explicitly performing the required summations over the energy levels.     

An alternate smearing method for Wilson loops in lattice QCD

We have constructed the bag model having a central constant color field. The motion of the quark is studied in this bag and the Dirac equation is solved for it. The energy spectrum found has a branching due to the interaction of the quarks with the color background. It is pointed out that this model can be applied for taking into account, in the mass spectrum of the hadrons, the coupling of the constituent quarks with the gluon condensation as the interaction with the color background.Received: 7 December 2003, Revised: 18 January 2004, Published online: 3 March 2004Sh. Mamedov: shahin@theory.ipm.ac.ir     

Defining the mass spectrum of mesons while taking into account the relativistic character of interactions

Taking into account the relativistic and nonlocal character of interactions, the mass spectrum of mesons consisting of light-light and light-heavy quarks with orbital and radial excitations is determined. Our results show that good agreement with the experimental data for the slope and the intercept of the Regge trajectory can be obtained only by taking into account the nonperturbative and the nonlocal character of interactions. There is certainly a dependence of the constituent mass of constituent particles on the mass of a free state. When quarks are light, the difference in current and valent masses of quarks is greater than in valent masses of quarks; when quarks are heavy, the difference in theses masses is insignificant. One alternative version of the account of nonlocality is suggested for a definition of the properties of hadrons at large distances. The dependence of constituent mass on the radius of confinement is studied.     

The QCD effective Lagrangian for ordinary quarks in a constant self-dual background mean-field is confining

The formalism is Adler's mean-field approximation to QCD. The model involves ordinary, massive quarks moving in a constant background field, which is Leutwyler's self-dual solution of the Yang-Mills equations. The outcome is quark confinement, independently of the number of flavors.     

Influence of chaos on the fusion enhancement by electron screening

We compute by numerical integration of the Dirac equation the number of quark-antiquark pairs produced in the classical color fields of colliding ultrarelativistic nuclei. Results for the dependence of the number of quarks on the strength of the background field, the quark mass and time are presented. We also perform several tests of our numerical method. While the number of qˉ pairs is parametrically suppressed in the coupling constant, we find that in this classical field model it could even be compatible with the thermal ratio to the number of gluons.     

Quantenphysikalischer Ursprung der Eichidee

The Quantum Physical Origin of the Gauge Idea To consider quantum physics as an interplay of creation and annihilation processes has the consequence that gauge field theories are not only possible but necessary. Since the complex conjugate phase factors of each pair of fermion creators and annihilators can be arbitrary chosen, quantum field theories must be completely phase invariant. Unfortunately, even globally the Dirac equation for systems of free fermions is not phase invariant. The Dirac matrices are namely transformed, if we multiply the spinor components by different constant phase factors. The Dirac equations before and after the transformation are however physically equivalent. We may therefore say: Systems of free fermions will be completely described, only if we consider the class of all equivalent Dirac equations. Since Dirac's commutation relations are unitarily invariant, the class equivalent Dirac equations is invariant under all transformations of the group U 4. Unitary diagonal matrices yield arbitrary phase transformations. Hence, gauge fields of the group U 4 are compatible with the postulate of general phase invariance. These gauge file are so similar to the QED that we may speak of an “extended quantum electrodynamics”, EQE. Here, we will show that EQE exists. The invariant subgroup U 1 U 4 yields QED. The complementary subgroup SU 4 includes four subgroups SU 3, there subgroups O 4, and six subgroups SU 2. The latter ones may yield three pairs of quarks and three pairs of leptons, where the quarks form a group SU 3. More than two times three pairs of elementary fermions does not exist in in EQE Probably, EQE is different from the United EQD and QCD. However, it should be a promising version of a field theory in elementary particle physics, because it follows from an existing symmetry of the empirically wel founded Dirac theory. EQE is therefore free from hypothesis in the Newtonian sense of the word. Whatever it will finally mean, it cannot be rejected, since phase invariance must be required. The invention of new symmetries and the acception of a bie number of independent spinor components is dispensable or must be postponed at least.     

Generalized maxwell equations and quantum mechanics. I. Dirac equation for the free electron

Some preliminary results presented in two previous papers are expanded upon. In the first it was shown that the Maxwell equations are equivalent to a nonlinear Dirac-like spinor equation. In the present paper it is shown that, in that formalism, the Dirac equation for the free electron is susceptible to a puzzling reinterpretation. In fact, it is shown that the Dirac equation is equivalent to the Maxwell equations for an electromagnetic field generated by two currents: one electric in nature and one, magnetic-monopolar. The elaboration of this result brings a nonlinear generalization of Maxwell's equations, as well as a nonlinear Dirac-like equation fully equivalent to them, from which both the electron mass as well as the magnetic monopole mass appear to be fully electromagnetic in nature, and the magnetic monopole to be tachyonic. The corresponding nonlinear Dirac equation reduces, under suitable approximations, to the ordinary Dirac equation for the free electron.     

Perfect-Fluid Sources for the Levi-Civita Metric II

A regular static interior solution of Einstein’s field equations representing a perfect fluid cylinder of finite radius is presented. The solution is matched to the Levi-Civita vacuum solution at a boundary where the pressure vanishes. The density and pressure are finite and positive inside the cylinder for a specific range of the mass parameter. The solution could thus represent a reasonable source for the Levi-Civita metric.