Vacuum structure of Yang-Mills theory as a function of θ.

Autor: Aitken, Kyle, Cherman, Aleksey, Ünsal, Mithat
Předmět:
Zdroj: Journal of High Energy Physics; Sep2018, Vol. 2018 Issue 9, preceding p1-28, 29p
Abstrakt: It is believed that in SU(N) Yang-Mills theory observables are N -branched functions of the topological θ angle. This is supposed to be due to the existence of a set of locally-stable candidate vacua, which compete for global stability as a function of θ. We study the number of θ vacua, their interpretation, and their stability properties using systematic semiclassical analysis in the context of adiabatic circle compactification on ℝ³ × S1. We find that while observables are indeed N-branched functions of θ, there are only ≈ N/2 locally-stable candidate vacua for any given θ. We point out that the different θ vacua are distinguished by the expectation values of certain magnetic line operators that carry non-zero GNO charge but zero 't Hooft charge. Finally, we show that in the regime of validity of our analysis YM theory has spinodal points as a function of θ, and gather evidence for the conjecture that these spinodal points are present even in the ℝ4 limit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Databáze: Complementary Index
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