Temperature-reflection I: field theory, ensembles, and interactions
| Autor: | McGady, David A. |
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| Rok vydání: | 2017 |
| Předmět: | |
| Druh dokumentu: | Working Paper |
| Popis: | In this paper, we revisit the claim that many partition functions are invariant under reflecting temperatures to negative values (T-reflection). The goal of this paper is to demarcate which partition functions should be invariant under T-reflection, and why. Our main claim is that finite-temperature path integrals for quantum field theories (QFTs) should be T-reflection invariant. Because multi-particle partition functions are equal to Euclidean path integrals for QFTs, we expect them to be T-reflection invariant. Single-particle partition functions though are often not invariant under T-reflection. Several exactly solvable systems are non-invariant under naive T-reflection, but are likely invariant under an extended T-reflection. We give example systems that are T-reflection invariant but are (1) non-unitary, (2) chiral, (3) interacting, (4) non-supersymmetric, or (5) non-conformal, and (6) argue that T-reflection is unrelated to time-reversal. Finally, we study the interplay between T-reflection and perturbation theory in the anharmonic harmonic oscillator in quantum mechanics and in Yang-Mills in four-dimensions. This is the first in a series of papers on temperature-reflections. Comment: 50 pages, 1 figure, comments welcome! |
| Databáze: | arXiv |
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