Vacuum structures in Hamiltonian light-front dynamics

Hamiltonian light-front dynamics of quantum fields may provide a useful approach to systematic nonperturbative approximations to quantum field theories. We investigate inequivalent Hilbert-space representations of the light-front field algebra in which the stability group of the light front is implemented by unitary transformations. The Hilbert space representation of states is generated by the operator algebra from the vacuum state. There is a large class of vacuum states besides the Fock vacuum which meet all the invariance requirements. The light-front Hamiltonian must annihilate the vacuum and have a positive spectrum. We exhibit relations of the Hamiltonian to the nontrivial vacuum structure.     

AdS/QCD and Applications of Light-Front Holography

Light-front holography leads to a rigorous connection between hadronic amplitudes in a higher dimensional anti-de Sitter(AdS) space and frame-independent light-front wavefunctions of hadrons in(3 + 1)-dimensional physical space-time,thus providing a compelling physical interpretation of the AdS/CFT correspondence principle and AdS/QCD,a useful framework which describes the correspondence between theories in a modified AdS 5 background and confining field theories in physical space-time.To a first semiclassical approximation,where quantum loops and quark masses are not included,this approach leads to a single-variable light-front Schro¨dinger equation which determines the eigenspectrum and the light-front wavefunctions of hadrons for general spin and orbital angular momentum.The coordinate z in AdS space is uniquely identified with a Lorentz-invariant coordinate ζ which measures the separation of the constituents within a hadron at equal light-front time.The internal structure of hadrons is explicitly introduced and the angular momentum of the constituents plays a key role.We give an overview of the light-front holographic approach to strongly coupled QCD.In particular,we study the photon-to-meson transition form factors(TFFs) FMγ(Q 2) for γ→ M using light-front holographic methods.The results for the TFFs for the η and η ' mesons are also presented.Some novel features of QCD are discussed,including the consequences of confinement for quark and gluon condensates.A method for computing the hadronization of quark and gluon jets at the amplitude level is outlined.     

A Light-Front Coupled Cluster Method

A new method for the nonperturbative solution of quantum field theories is described. The method adapts the exponential-operator technique of the standard many-body coupled-cluster method to the Fock-space eigenvalue problem for light-front Hamiltonians. This leads to an effective eigenvalue problem in the valence Fock sector and a set of nonlinear integral equations for the functions that define the exponential operator. The approach avoids at least some of the difficulties associated with the Fock-space truncation usually used.     

Light-Front Holography and the Light-Front Coupled-Cluster Method

We summarize the light-front coupled-cluster (LFCC) method for the solution of field-theoretic bound-state eigenvalue problems and indicate the connection with light-front holographic QCD. This includes a sample application of the LFCC method and leads to a relativistic quark model for mesons that adds longitudinal dynamics to the usual transverse light-front holographic Schrödinger equation.     

Atoms in flight and the remarkable connections between atomic and hadronic physics

Atomic physics and hadron physics are both based on Yang Mills gauge theory; in fact, quantum electrodynamics can be regarded as the zero-color limit of quantum chromodynamics. I review a number of areas where the techniques of atomic physics provide important insight into the theory of hadrons in QCD. For example, the Dirac-Coulomb equation, which predicts the spectroscopy and structure of hydrogenic atoms, has an analog in hadron physics in the form of light-front relativistic equations of motion which give a remarkable first approximation to the spectroscopy, dynamics, and structure of light hadrons. The renormalization scale for the running coupling, which is unambiguously set in QED, leads to a method for setting the renormalization scale in QCD. The production of atoms in flight provides a method for computing the formation of hadrons at the amplitude level. Conversely, many techniques which have been developed for hadron physics, such as scaling laws, evolution equations, and light-front quantization have equal utility for atomic physics, especially in the relativistic domain. I also present a new perspective for understanding the contributions to the cosmological constant from QED and QCD.     

On the quantization of gravity

We analyse the construction of quantum states for the case of gravity and matter using the solution of the 2-submanifold boundary value problem and “sum over paths” quantisation. This leads to a specification of such states in terms of a complete commuting set of operators. The “sum over topologies” definition is obtained only by a very ad hoc assumption which is made precise. The problem of the arbitrariness of the background metric discussed and resolved by analogy with QED.     

Quantum Computation of Fuzzy Numbers

We study the possibility of performing fuzzy set operations on a quantum computer. After giving a brief overview of the necessary quantum computational and fuzzy set theoretical concepts we demonstrate how to encode the membership function of a digitized fuzzy number in the state space of a quantum register by using a suitable superposition of tensor product states that form a computational basis. We show that a standard quantum adder is capable to perform Kaufmann's addition of fuzzy numbers in the course of only one run by acting at once on all states in the superposition, which leads to a considerable gain in the number of required operations with respect to performing such addition on a classical computer.     

A light-front coupled-cluster method for the nonperturbative solution of quantum field theories

We propose a new method for the nonperturbative solution of quantum field theories and illustrate its use in the context of a light-front analog to the Greenberg–Schweber model. The method is based on light-front quantization and uses the exponential-operator technique of the many-body coupled-cluster method. The formulation produces an effective Hamiltonian eigenvalue problem in the valence Fock sector of the system of interest, combined with nonlinear integral equations to be solved for the functions that define the effective Hamiltonian. The method avoids the Fock-space truncations usually used in nonperturbative light-front Hamiltonian methods and, therefore, does not suffer from the spectator dependence, Fock-sector dependence, and uncanceled divergences caused by such truncations.     

Finite-Temperature Field Theory on the Light Front

The formulation of statistical physics using light-front quantization, instead of conventional equal-time boundary conditions, has important advantages for describing relativistic statistical systems, such as heavy ion collisions. We develop light-front field theory at finite temperature and density with special attention to quantum chromodynamics. First, we construct the most general form of the statistical operator allowed by the Poincaré algebra. In light-front quantization, the Green’s functions of a quark in a medium can be defined in terms of just two-component spinors and do not lead to doublers in the transverse directions. Since the theory is non-local along the light cone, we use causality arguments to construct a solution to the related zero-mode problem. A seminal property of light-front Green’s functions is that they are related to parton densities in coordinate space. Namely, the diagonal and off-diagonal parton distributions measured in hard scattering experiments can be interpreted as light-front density matrices.     

Example of a Model for AdS/QFT Duality

Models of hadrons that are rooted in light-front (LF) formulation of QCD have been linked to the classical field equations in a 5-dimensional anti-de Sitter (AdS) gravitational background in terms of the Brodsky-de Téramond LF holography. We discuss the classical equations of motion for the expectation values of operators in quantum field theory whose nature resembles the Ehrenfest equations of quantum mechanics and which thus appear to provide a general justification for the holographic picture. The required expectation values are obtained by distinguishing one effective constituent of a hadron, the one that is struck by an external electro-weak or gravitational probe, and integrating over relative motion variables of all other constituents in all Fock components. The scale-dependent Fock decomposition of hadronic states is defined using the renormalization group procedure for effective particles. The AdS modes dual to the incoming and outgoing hadrons in the corresponding transition matrix elements are thus found equivalent to the Gaussian form distribution functions for the effective partons struck by external probes.     

Form Factors of Few-Body Systems: Point Form Versus Front Form

We present a relativistic point-form approach for the calculation of electroweak form factors of few-body bound states that leads to results which resemble those obtained within the covariant light-front formalism of Carbonell et al. (Phys. Rep. 300:215–347, 1998). Our starting points are the physical processes in which such form factors are measured, i.e. electron scattering off the bound state, or the semileptonic weak decay of the bound state. These processes are treated by means of a coupled-channel framework for a Bakamjian–Thomas type mass operator. A current with the correct covariance properties is then derived from the pertinent leading-order electroweak scattering or decay amplitude. As it turns out, the electromagnetic current is affected by unphysical contributions which can be traced back to wrong cluster properties inherent in the Bakamjian–Thomas construction. These spurious contributions, however, can be separated uniquely, as in the covariant light-front approach. In this way we end up with form factors which agree with those obtained from the covariant light-front approach. As an example we will present results for electroweak form factors of heavy–light systems and discuss the heavy-quark limit which leads to the famous Isgur–Wise function.     

Realization of the SU(N) Kondo effect in a strong magnetic field

In this Letter we suggest a realization of the SU(N) Kondo effect, using quantum dots at strong magnetic field. We propose using edge states of the quantum Hall effect as pseudospin that interact with multiple quantum dots structures. In the suggested realization one can access each pseudospin separately and hence may perform a set of experiments that were impossible until now. We focus on the realization of SU(2) and SU(3) Kondo effects and find in the unitary limit a conductivity of 3/4 quantum conductance in the SU(3) case.     

Relativistic Covariance of Light-Front Few-Body Systems in Hadron Physics

We study the light-front covariance of a vector-meson decay constant using a manifestly covariant fermion field theory model in (3 + 1) dimensions. The light-front zero-mode issues are analyzed in terms of polarization vectors and method of identifying the zero-mode operator and of obtaining the light-front covariant decay constant is discussed.     

Much ado about nothing: Vacuum and renormalization in the light-front framework

In the light-front (LF) formulation of quantum field theory, nontrivial vacuum structure can appear only in zero-modes. Integrating out zero-mode degrees of freedom leads to an effective LF Hamiltonian, which acts only on nonzero-modes and thus has a trivial vacuum, but is nevertheless equivalent to the Hamiltonian in normal coordinates (with nontrivial vacuum) since the nontrivial vacuum structure enters through the coefficients of the eff. LF Hamiltonian.     

Improving direct state measurements by using rebits in real enlarged Hilbert spaces

We propose a protocol to improve the accuracy of direct complex state measurements (DSM) by using rebits in real Hilbert spaces. We show that to improve the accuracy, the initial complex state should be decomposed into the real and imaginary parts and stored in an extended state (rebit) which can be tracked individually by two bases of an extra qubit. For pure states, the numerical calculations show that the trace distances between the true state and the reconstructed state obtained from the rebit method are more precise than those ones obtained from the usual DSM and quantum state tomography (SQT) because the number of projective measurements is reduced. For mixed states, the rebit method gives the same accuracy in comparison to the usual DSM, while it is less precise than QST. Its precision is also significantly improved when using nearly-pure states. Our proposal holds promises as a reliable tool for quantum computation, testing of quantum circuits by using only real amplitudes.     

QCD on the Light-Front

Light-front Hamiltonian theory, derived from the quantization of the QCD Lagrangian at fixed light-front time x ⁺ = x ⁰ + x ³, provides a rigorous frame-independent framework for solving nonperturbative QCD. The eigenvalues of the light-front QCD Hamiltonian H _LF predict the hadronic mass spectrum, and the corresponding eigensolutions provide the light-front wavefunctions which describe hadron structure, providing a direct connection to the QCD Lagrangian. In the semiclassical approximation the valence Fock-state wavefunctions of the light-front QCD Hamiltonian satisfy a single-variable relativistic equation of motion, analogous to the nonrelativistic radial Schrödinger equation, with an effective confining potential U which systematically incorporates the effects of higher quark and gluon Fock states. Remarkably, the potential U has a unique form of a harmonic oscillator potential if one requires that the chiral QCD action remains conformally invariant. A mass gap and the color confinement scale also arises when one extends the formalism of de Alfaro, Fubini and Furlan to light-front Hamiltonian theory. In the case of mesons, the valence Fock-state wavefunctions of H _LF for zero quark mass satisfy a single-variable relativistic equation of motion in the invariant variable \({\zeta^2=b^2_\perp x(1-x)}\) , which is conjugate to the invariant mass squared \({{M^2_{q\bar q}}}\) . The result is a nonperturbative relativistic light-front quantum mechanical wave equation which incorporates color confinement and other essential spectroscopic and dynamical features of hadron physics, including a massless pion for zero quark mass and linear Regge trajectories \({M^2(n, L, S) = 4\kappa^2( n+L +S/2)}\) with the same slope in the radial quantum number n and orbital angular momentum L. Only one mass parameter \({\kappa}\) appears. The corresponding light-front Dirac equation provides a dynamical and spectroscopic model of nucleons. The same light-front equations arise from the holographic mapping of the soft-wall model modification of AdS₅ space with a unique dilaton profile to QCD (3 + 1) at fixed light-front time. Light-front holography thus provides a precise relation between the bound-state amplitudes in the fifth dimension of AdS space and the boost-invariant light-front wavefunctions describing the internal structure of hadrons in physical space-time. We also discuss the implications of the underlying conformal template of QCD for renormalization scale-setting and the implications of light-front quantization for the value of the cosmological constant.     

Asymptotic Error Rates in Quantum Hypothesis Testing

We consider the problem of discriminating between two different states of a finite quantum system in the setting of large numbers of copies, and find a closed form expression for the asymptotic exponential rate at which the error probability tends to zero. This leads to the identification of the quantum generalisation of the classical Chernoff distance, which is the corresponding quantity in classical symmetric hypothesis testing. The proof relies on two new techniques introduced by the authors, which are also well suited to tackle the corresponding problem in asymmetric hypothesis testing, yielding the quantum generalisation of the classical Hoeffding bound. This has been done by Hayashi and Nagaoka for the special case where the states have full support. The goal of this paper is to present the proofs of these results in a unified way and in full generality, allowing hypothesis states with different supports. From the quantum Hoeffding bound, we then easily derive quantum Stein’s Lemma and quantum Sanov’s theorem. We give an in-depth treatment of the properties of the quantum Chernoff distance, and argue that it is a natural distance measure on the set of density operators, with a clear operational meaning.     

D0-branes as light-front confined quarks

We argue that different aspects of light-front QCD at the confined phase can be recovered by the matrix quantum mechanics of D0-branes. The relevant matrix quantum mechanics is obtained from dimensional reduction of pure Yang–Mills theory to dimension 0+1. The aspects of QCD dynamics which are studied in correspondence with D0-branes are: (1) phenomenological inter-quark potentials, (2) the whiteness of hadrons and (3) scattering amplitudes. In addition, some other issues such as the large-N behavior, the gravity–gauge theory relation and also a possible justification for involving “non-commutative coordinates” in the study of QCD bound states are discussed. Received: 12 January 2001 / Published online: 6 April 2001