Cut-off versus dimensional regularization in the light-cone gauge

The conventional cut-off method is applied to massless light-cone gauge Feynman integrals. Despite the presence of non-local terms in the unintegrated expression for the Yang-Mills self-energy, the cut-off procedure yields the same ultra-violet behaviour as the lengthier technique of dimensional regularization.     

Double-real corrections at $${{\mathcal {O}}(\alpha \alpha _s)}\,$$to single gauge boson production

We consider the \({{\mathcal {O}}(\alpha \alpha _s)}\,\)corrections to single on-shell gauge boson production at hadron colliders. We concentrate on the contribution of all the subprocesses where the gauge boson is accompanied by the emission of two additional real partons and we evaluate the corresponding total cross sections. The latter are divergent quantities, because of soft and collinear emissions, and are expressed as Laurent series in the dimensional regularization parameter. The total cross sections are evaluated by means of reverse unitarity, i.e. expressing the phase-space integrals in terms of two-loop forward box integrals with cuts on the final-state particles. The results are reduced to a combination of master integrals, which eventually are evaluated in terms of generalized polylogarithms. The presence of internal massive lines in the Feynman diagrams, due to the exchange of electroweak gauge bosons, causes the appearance of 14 master integrals which were not previously known in the literature and have been evaluated via differential equations.     

Two-loop quark self-energy in a new formalism (I) Overlapping divergences

A new integration technique for multi-loop Feynman integrals, called the matrix method, is developed and then applied to the divergent part of the overlapping two-loop quark self-energy function iΣ in the light-cone gauge n · A^a(x) = 0, n² = 0. It is shown that the coefficient of the double-pole term is strictly local, even off mass-shell, while the coefficient of the single-pole term contains local as well as nonlocal parts. On mass-shell, the single-pole part is local, of course. It is worth noting that the original overlapping self-energy integral reduces eventually to 10 covariant and 38 noncovariant-gauge integrals. We were able to verify explicitly that the divergent parts of the 10 double covariant-gauge integrals agreed precisely with those currently used to calculate radiative corrections in the Standard Model.

Our new technique is amazingly powerful, being applicable to massive and massless integrals alike, and capable of handling both covariant-gauge integrals and the more difficult noncovariant-gauge integrals. Perhaps the most important feature of the matrix method is the ability to execute the 4ω-dimensional momentum integrations in a single operation, exactly and in analytic form. The method works equally well for other axial-type gauges, notably the temporal gauge (n² > 0) and the pure axial gauge (n² < 0).     

Feynman integrals with tensorial structure in the negative dimensional integration scheme

The negative-dimensional integration method (NDIM) is revealing itself as a very useful technique for computing massless and/or massive Feynman integrals, covariant and noncovariant alike. Up until now, however, the illustrative calculations done using such method have been mostly covariant scalar integrals, without numerator factors. We show here how those integrals with tensorial structures also can be handled straightforwardly and easily. However, contrary to the absence of significant features in the usual approach, here the NDIM also allows us to come across surprising unsuspected bonuses. Toward this end, we present two alternative ways of working out the integrals and illustrate them by taking the easiest Feynman integrals in this category that emerge in the computation of a standard one-loop self-energy diagram. One of the novel and heretofore unsuspected bonuses is that there are degeneracies in the way one can express the final result for the referred Feynman integral. Received: 3 November 1998 /Published online: 3 August 1999     

Convergence of Feynman integrals in Coulomb gauge QCD

At 2-loop order, Feynman integrals in the Coulomb gauge are divergent over the internal energy variables. Nevertheless, it is known how to calculate the effective action, provided that the external gluon fields are all transverse. We show that, for the two-gluon Greens function as an example, the method can be extended to include longitudinal external fields. The longitudinal Greens functions appear in the BRST identities. As an intermediate step, we use a flow gauge, which interpolates between the Feynman and Coulomb gauges.     

Light-cone auxiliary fields for ten-dimensional super Yang-Mills

We consider ten-dimensional super Yang-Mills in the light-cone gauge and define a set of auxiliary fields which close the light-cone super algebra off-shell. As a necessary preliminary we give a systematic discussion of the auxiliary field problem for simple super Yang-Mills in dimensions 3, 4, 6 and 10 both covariantly and in the light-cone framework. The motivation for this work is that it may prove useful in conjunction with the ideas of harmonic superspace. With this in mind we indicate how the light-cone theory in ten dimensions can be formulated in light-cone superspace using unconstrained superfields.     

Of Ghosts, Gauge Volumes, and Gauss's Law

The relationship between the canonical operator and the path integral formulation of quantum electrodynamics is analyzed with a particular focus on the implementation of gauge constraints in the two approaches. The removal of gauge volumes in the path integral is shown to match with the presence of zero-norm ghost states associated with gauge transformations in the canonical operator approach. The path integrals for QED in both the Feynman and the temporal gauges are examined and several ways of implementing the gauge constraint integrations are demonstrated. The upshot is to show that both the Feynman and the temporal gauge path integrals are equivalent to the Coulomb gauge path integral, matching the results developed by Kurt Haller using the canonical formalism. In addition, the Faddeev–Popov form for the Feynman gauge and temporal gauge Lagrangian path integrals are derived from the Hamiltonian form of the path integral.     

QCD calculations in the light-cone gauge

The non-singlet quark structure function is calculated in the leading logarithm approximation in an axial gauge with n² = 0, the light-cone gauge. The choice n² = 0 leads to a simple identity for loop integrals involving the extra n · k denominators. We compare the results graph by graph with both Feynman gauge QCD and a scalar gluon theory. The leading diagrams are the same “rainbow” diagrams as for the case of the scalar theory.The techniques are also applied to quark-quark scattering at large transverse momentum. The leading diagrams have the same dressed ladder-form factor structure.     

Slave bosons in radial gauge: A bridge between path integral and Hamiltonian language

We establish a correspondence between the resummation of world lines and the diagonalization of the Hamiltonian for a strongly correlated electronic system. For this purpose, we analyze the functional integrals for the partition function and the correlation functions invoking a slave boson representation in the radial gauge. We show in the spinless case that the Green's function of the physical electron and the projected Green's function of the pseudofermion coincide. Correlation and Green's functions in the spinful case involve a complex entanglement of the world lines which, however, can be obtained through a strikingly simple extension of the spinless scheme. As a toy model we investigate the two-site cluster of the single impurity Anderson model which yields analytical results. All expectation values and dynamical correlation functions are obtained from the exact calculation of the relevant functional integrals. The hole density, the hole auto-correlation function and the Green's function are computed, and a comparison between spinless and spin 1/2 systems provides insight into the role of the radial slave boson field. In particular, the exact expectation value of the radial slave boson field is finite in both cases, and it is not related to a Bose condensate.     

The Number of Master Integrals is Finite

For a fixed Feynman graph one can consider Feynman integrals with all possible powers of propagators and try to reduce them, by linear relations, to a finite subset of integrals, the so-called master integrals. Up to now, there are numerous examples of reduction procedures resulting in a finite number of master integrals for various families of Feynman integrals. However, up to now it was just an empirical fact that the reduction procedure results in a finite number of irreducible integrals. It this paper we prove that the number of master integrals is always finite.     

Note on Higgs Decay into Two Photons H → γγ

The Higgs decay H →γγ due to the virtual W-loop effect is revisited in the unitary gauge by using the symmetry-preserving and divergent-behavior-preserving loop regularization method,which is realized in the fourdimensional space-time without changing original theory.Though the one-loop amplitude of H →γγ is finite as the Higgs boson in the standard model has no direct interaction with the massless photons at tree level,it involves both tensor-type and scalar-type divergent integrals which can in general destroy the gauge invariance without imposing a proper regularization scheme to make them well-defined.As the loop regularization scheme can ensure the consistency conditions between the regularized tensor-type and scalar-type divergent irreducible loop integrals to preserve gauge invariance,we explicitly show the absence of decoupling in the limit M W /M H → 0 and obtain a result agreeing exactly with the earlier one in the literature.We then clarify the discrepancy of the earlier result from the recent one obtained by R.Gastmans,S.L.Wu and T.T.Wu.The advantage of calculation in the unitary gauge becomes manifest in that the non-decoupling arises from the longitudinal contribution of the W gauge boson.     

Ghost-free formulation of quantum gravity in the light-cone gauge

By choosing the light-cone gauge, we remove all redundant components of the metric tensor as well as all Faddeev-Popov ghosts from the Einstein Lagrangian, from which Feynman rules for two independent transverse components can be immediately formulated. The 2 + 2 decomposition of the metric tensor proves to be simpler than the usual canonical 1 + 3 decomposition, so that all spurious components can be explicitly eliminated from the spectrum. Because the Lagrangian is now only a function of independent components, it is possible to study the unresolved problem of the functional measure for quantum gravity. We are presently studying the measure problem.     

Feynman rules for Coulomb gauge QCD

The Coulomb gauge in nonabelian gauge theories is attractive in principle, but beset with technical difficulties in perturbation theory. In addition to ordinary Feynman integrals, there are, at 2-loop order, Christ–Lee (CL) terms, derived either by correctly ordering the operators in the Hamiltonian, or by resolving ambiguous Feynman integrals. Renormalization theory depends on the sub-graph structure of ordinary Feynman graphs. The CL terms do not have a sub-graph structure. We show how to carry out renormalization in the presence of CL terms, by re-expressing these as ‘pseudo-Feynman’ integrals. We also explain how energy divergences cancel.