Dynamical Masses and Confinement in QED[sub 3

Abstract

Dynamical Chiral Symmetry Breaking (DCSB) and Confinement are two crucial features of QCD which are responsible for the nature of the hadronic spectrum. A simpler model which exhibits both is quantum electrodynamics in (2+1) space‐time dimensions, QED3. A long standing debate in this model is the existence of a critical number of fermion families, Nc, above which DCSB ceases to take place. This was established from the solutions of the Schwinger‐Dyson equations (SDEs), in the leading order of the 1/N expansion in the Landau gauge. Confinement has also been found to be absent in this scenario. In this work, we study the stability of the solutions to the said SDEs under a variation of gauge while still working with the bare vertex. We find that the Landau gauge is the only gauge which exhibits the above mentioned results. Away from this gauge, DCSB takes place for an arbitrarily large N and confinement is reinstated. Attempting to understand this apparent inconsistency, we argue that in order to maintain th...