Schwinger mechanism for gluon-pair production in the presence of arbitrary time-dependent chromo-electric field

We study the Schwinger mechanism for gluon-pair production in the presence of an arbitrary time-dependent chromo-electric background field E ^a (t) with arbitrary color index a=1,2,…,8 in SU(3) by directly evaluating the path integral. We obtain an exact expression for the probability of non-perturbative gluon-pair production per unit time per unit volume and per unit transverse momentum, , from arbitrary E ^a (t). We show that the tadpole (or single-gluon) effective action does not contribute to the non-perturbative gluon-pair production rate, . We find that the exact result for non-perturbative gluon-pair production is independent of all the time derivatives , where n=1,2,…,∞, and that it has the same functional dependence on the two Casimir invariants, [E ^a (t)E ^a (t)] and [d _abc E ^a (t)E ^b (t)E ^c (t)]², as the constant chromo-electric field E ^a result with the replacement: E ^a →E ^a (t). This result relies crucially on the validity of the shift conjecture, which has not yet been established. This result may be relevant to the study of the production of a non-perturbative quark–gluon plasma at RHIC and LHC.     

Adjoint QCD1 + 1 in light-cone gauge, quantized at equal time

SU (2) gauge theory coupled to massless fermions in the adjoint representation is quantized in light-cone gauge by imposing the equal-time canonical algebra. The theory is defined on a space-time cylinder with “twisted” boundary conditions, periodic for one color component (the diagonal 3-component) and antiperiodic for the other two. The focus of the study is on the non-trivial vacuum structure and the fermion condensate. It is shown that the indefinite-metric quantization of free gauge bosons is not compatible with the residual gauge symmetry of the interacting theory. A suitable quantization of the unphysical modes of the gauge field is necessary in order to guarantee the consistency of the subsidiary condition and allow the quantum representation of the residual gauge symmetry of the classical Lagrangian: the 3-color component of the gauge field must be quantized in a space with an indefinite metric while the other two components require a positive-definite metric. The contribution of the latter to the free Hamiltonian becomes highly pathological in this representation, but a larger portion of the interacting Hamiltonian can be diagonalized, thus allowing perturbative calculations to be performed. The vacuum is evaluated through second order in perturbation theory and this result is used for an approximate determination of the fermion condensate.     

Dynamical view of pair creation in uniform electric and magnetic fields

Pair creation in a uniform classical electromagnetic field (Schwinger mechanism) is studied focusing on the time evolution of the distribution of created particles. The time evolution of the distribution in time-dependent fields is also presented as well as effects of back reaction. Motivated by the Glasma flux tube, which may be formed at the initial stage of heavy-ion collisions, we investigate effects of a magnetic field parallel to an electric field, and find that the magnetic field makes the evolution of a fermion system faster.     

Globally conformal invariant gauge field theory with rational correlation functions

Operator product expansions (OPE) for the product of a scalar field with its conjugate are presented as infinite sums of bilocal fields V_κ(x₁,x₂) of dimension (κ,κ). For a globally conformal invariant (GCI) theory we write down the OPE of V_κ into a series of twist (dimension minus rank) 2κ symmetric traceless tensor fields with coefficients computed from the (rational) 4-point function of the scalar field.

We argue that the theory of a GCI hermitian scalar field of dimension 4 in D=4 Minkowski space such that the 3-point functions of a pair of 's and a scalar field of dimension 2 or 4 vanish can be interpreted as the theory of local observables of a conformally invariant fixed point in a gauge theory with Lagrangian density .     

Plaquette expansion proof and interpretation

The plaquette expansion, a general non-perturbative method for calculating the properties of lattice Hamiltonian systems, is established up to the first two orders for an arbitrary system. This method employs an expansion of the Lanczos coefficients, the tridiagonal Hamiltonian matrix elements or equivalently the continued fraction coefficients of the resolvent, in a descending series in the size of the system. The coefficients of this series are formed from the low order cumulants or connected Hamiltonian moments. The lowest order approximation in the plaquette expansion corresponds to a gaussian model which is a consequence of the central limit theorem. The first nontrivial order yields a model with a spectrum on a bounded energy interval, becoming asymptotically uniform in the thermodynamic limit.     

Spontaneously broken quark helicity symmetry

We discuss the origin of chiral-symmetry breaking in the light-cone representation of QCD. In particular, we show how quark helicity symmetry is spontaneously broken in SU (N) gauge theory with massless quarks if that theory has a condensate of fermion light-cone zero modes. The symmetry breaking appears as induced interactions in an effective light-cone Hamiltonian equation based on a trivial vacuum. The induced interaction is crucial for generating a splitting between pseudoscalar and vector meson masses, which we illustrate with spectrum calculations in some 1 + 1-dimensional reduced models of gauge theory.