Choice Of Gauge Research Articles

Relativistic perturbations in ΛCDM: Eulerian & Lagrangian approaches

We study the relativistic dynamics of a pressure-less and irrotational fluid of dark matter (CDM) with a cosmological constant (Λ), up to second order in cosmological perturbation theory. In our analysis we also account for vector and tensor perturbations and include primordial non-Gaussianity. We consider three gauges: the synchronous-comoving gauge, the Poisson gauge and the total matter gauge, where the first is the unique relativistic Lagrangian frame of reference, and the latters are convenient gauge choices for Eulerian frames. Our starting point is the metric and fluid variables in the Poisson gauge up to second order. We then perform the gauge transformations to the synchronous-comoving gauge and subsequently to the total matter gauge. Our expressions for the metrics, densities, velocities, and the gauge generators are novel and coincide with known results in the limit of a vanishing cosmological constant.

Gauge-Invariant Frozen Gaussian Approximation Method for the Schrödinger Equation with Periodic Potentials

We develop a gauge-invariant frozen Gaussian approximation (GIFGA) method for the Schrodinger equation (LSE) with periodic potentials in the semiclassical regime. The method generalizes the Herman--Kluk propagator for LSE to the case with periodic media. It provides an efficient computational tool based on asymptotic analysis on phase space and Bloch waves to capture the high-frequency oscillations of the solution. Compared to geometric optics and Gaussian beam methods, GIFGA works in both scenarios of caustics and beam spreading. Moreover, it is invariant with respect to the gauge choice of the Bloch eigenfunctions and thus avoids the numerical difficulty of computing gauge-dependent Berry phase. We numerically test the method by several one-dimensional examples; in particular, the first order convergence is validated, which agrees with our companion analysis paper [Frozen Gaussian Approximation for High Frequency Wave Propagation in Periodic Media, arXiv:1504.08051, 2015].

Next-to-next-to-leading order gravitational spin-orbit coupling via the effective field theory for spinning objects in the post-Newtonian scheme

We implement the effective field theory for gravitating spinning objects in the post-Newtonian scheme at the next-to-next-to-leading order level to derive the gravitational spin-orbit interaction potential at the third and a half post-Newtonian order for rapidly rotating compact objects. From the next-to-next-to-leading order interaction potential, which we obtain here in a Lagrangian form for the first time, we derive straightforwardly the corresponding Hamiltonian. The spin-orbit sector constitutes the most elaborate spin dependent sector at each order, and accordingly we encounter a proliferation of the relevant Feynman diagrams, and a significant increase of the computational complexity. We present in detail the evaluation of the interaction potential, going over all contributing Feynman diagrams. The computation is carried out in terms of the ``nonrelativistic gravitational'' fields, which are advantageous also in spin dependent sectors, together with the various gauge choices included in the effective field theory for gravitating spinning objects, which also optimize the calculation. In addition, we automatize the effective field theory computations, and carry out the automated computations in parallel. Such automated effective field theory computations would be most useful to obtain higher order post-Newtonian corrections. We compare our Hamiltonian to the ADM Hamiltonian, and arrive at a complete agreement between the ADM and effective field theory results. Finally, we provide Hamiltonians in the center of mass frame, and complete gauge invariant relations among the binding energy, angular momentum, and orbital frequency of an inspiralling binary with generic compact spinning components to third and a half post-Newtonian order. The derivation presented here is essential to obtain further higher order post-Newtonian corrections, and to reach the accuracy level required for the successful detection of gravitational radiation.

Kerr scattering coefficients via isomonodromy

We study the scattering of a massless scalar field in a generic Kerr background. Using a particular gauge choice based on the current conservation of the radial equation, we give a generic formula for the scattering coefficient in terms of the composite monodromy parameter σ between the inner and the outer horizons. Using the isomonodromy flow, we calculate σ exactly in terms of the Painleve V τ -function. We also show that the eigenvalue problem for the angular equation (spheroidal harmonics) can be calculated using the same techniques. We use recent developments relating the Painleve V τ -function to Liouville irregular conformal blocks to claim that this scattering problem is solved in the combinatorial sense, with known expressions for the τ -function near the critical points.

Gravity with a cosmological constant from rational curves

We give a new formula for all tree-level correlators of boundary field insertions in gauged N=8 supergravity in AdS_4; this is an analog of the tree-level S-matrix in anti-de Sitter space. The formula is written in terms of rational maps from the Riemann sphere to twistor space, with no reference to bulk perturbation theory. It is polynomial in the cosmological constant, and equal to the classical scattering amplitudes of supergravity in the flat space limit. The formula is manifestly supersymmetric, independent of gauge choices on twistor space, and equivalent to expressions computed via perturbation theory at 3-point MHV-bar and n-point MHV. We also show that the formula factorizes and obeys BCFW recursion in twistor space.

Black hole critical behavior with the generalized BSSN formulation

The development of hyperbolic formulations of Einstein's equations has revolutionized our ability to perform long-time, stable, accurate numerical simulations of strong field gravitational phenomena. However, hyperbolic methods have seen relatively little application in one area of interest, type II critical collapse, where the challenges for a numerical code are particularly severe. Using the critical collapse of a massless scalar field in spherical symmetry as a test case, we study a generalization of the Baumgarte-Shapiro-Shibata-Nakamura (BSSN) formulation due to Brown that is suited for use with curvilinear coordinates. We adopt standard dynamical gauge choices, including 1+log slicing and a shift that is either zero or evolved by a Gamma-driver condition. With both choices of shift we are able to evolve sufficiently close to the black hole threshold to (1) unambiguously identify the discrete self-similarity of the critical solution (2) determine an echoing exponent consistent with previous calculations and (3) measure a mass scaling exponent, also in accord with prior computations. Our results can be viewed as an encouraging first step towards the use of hyperbolic formulations in more generic type II scenarios, including the as yet unresolved problem of critical collapse of axisymmetric gravitational waves.

Counting the degrees of freedom of generalized Galileons

We consider Galileon models on curved spacetime, as well as the counterterms introduced to maintain the second-order nature of the field equations of these models when both the metric and the scalar are made dynamical. Working in a gauge invariant framework, we first show how all the third-order time derivatives appearing in the field equations -- both metric and scalar -- of a Galileon model or one defined by a given counterterm can be eliminated to leave field equations which contain at most second-order time derivatives of the metric and of the scalar. The same is shown to hold for arbitrary linear combinations of such models, as well as their k-essence-like/Horndeski generalizations. This supports the claim that the number of degrees of freedom in these models is only 3, counting 2 for the graviton and 1 for the scalar. We comment on the arguments given previously in support of this claim. We then prove that this number of degrees of freedom is strictly less that 4 in one particular such model by carrying out a full-fledged Hamiltonian analysis. In contrast to previous results, our analyses do not assume any particular gauge choice of restricted applicability.

Flow equation forf(R)gravity and some of its exact solutions

We write a Renormalization Group (RG) equation for the function f in a theory of gravity in the f(R) truncation. Our equation differs from previous ones due to the exponential parametrization of the quantum fluctuations and to the choice of gauge. The cutoff procedure depends on three free parameters, and we find that there exist discrete special choices of parameters for which the flow equation has fixed points where f=f_0+f_1 R+f_2 R^2. For other values of the parameters the solution seems to be continuously deformed.

Galaxy bias and gauges at second order in general relativity

We discuss the question of gauge choice when analysing relativistic density perturbations at second order. We compare Newtonian and general relativistic approaches. Some misconceptions in the recent literature are addressed. We show that the comoving-synchronous gauge is the unique gauge in general relativity that corresponds to the Lagrangian frame and is entirely appropriate to describe the matter overdensity at second order. The comoving-synchronous gauge is the simplest gauge in which to describe Lagrangian bias at second order.

Spectroscopic analysis of the phase diagram of Yang-Mills-Higgs theory

Yang-Mills-Higgs theory, being the standard-model Higgs sector for a suitable choice of gauge and custodial group, offers a rich set of physics. In particular, in some region of its parameter space it has QCD-like behavior, while in some other region it is Higgs-like. Therefore, it is possible to study a plethora of phenomena within a single theory. Here, the physics of the standard-model version is studied using lattice gauge theory. To this end, the low-lying spectrum in several different channels is obtained for more than 140 different sets of bare parameters throughout the phase diagram. The theory shows quite different behaviors in the different regions, from almost Yang-Mills-like to the one of an essentially free gas of massive photons. Especially, not always is the behavior as naively expected.

Finite energy global well-posedness of the Yang–Mills equations on R 1 + 3 : An approach using the Yang–Mills heat flow

In this work, along with the companion work Oh (2012), we propose a novel approach to the problem of gauge choice for the \emph{Yang-Mills equations} on the Minkowski space $\mathbb{R}^{1+3}$. A crucial ingredient is the associated \emph{Yang-Mills heat flow}. As this approach does not possess the drawbacks of the previous approaches (as in Klainerman-Machedon (1995) and Tao (2003)), it is expected to be more robust and easily adaptable to other settings. Building on the results proved in the companion article Oh (2012), we prove, as one of the first applications of our approach, finite energy global well-posedness of the Yang-Mills equations on $\mathbb{R}^{1+3}$. This is a classical result first proved by S. Klainerman and M. Machedon (1995) using local Coulomb gauges. As opposed to their method, the present approach avoids the use of Uhlenbeck's lemma (1982), and hence does \emph{not} involve localization in space-time.

Gauge matters: observing the vortex-nucleation transition in a Bose condensate

The order parameter of a quantum-coherent many-body system can include a phase degree of freedom, which, in the presence of an electromagnetic field, depends on the choice of gauge. Because of the relationship between the phase gradient and the velocity, time-of-flight measurements reveal this gradient. Here, we describe such measurements of initially trapped Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) subject to an artificial magnetic field. Vortices nucleated in the BEC for artificial field strengths above a critical value, which represented a structural phase transition. By comparing to superfluid-hydrodynamic and Gross–Pitaevskii calculations, we confirmed that the transition from the vortex-free state gives rise to a shear in the released BEC's spatial distribution, representing a macroscopic method to measure this transition, distinct from direct imaging of vortex entry. Shear is also affected by an artificial electric field accompanying the artificial magnetic field turn-off, which depends on the details of the physical mechanism creating the artificial fields, and implies a most natural choice of gauge. Measurements of this kind offer opportunities for studying phase in less-well-understood quantum gas systems.

On the Hamiltonian and energy operators in a curved spacetime, especially for a Dirac particle

The definition of the Hamiltonian operator H for a general wave equation in a general spacetime is discussed. We recall that H depends on the coordinate system merely through the corresponding reference frame. When the wave equation involves a gauge choice and the gauge change is time-dependent, H asan operator depends on the gauge choice. This dependence extends to the energy operator E, which is the Hermitian part of H. We distinguish between this ambiguity issue of E and the one that occurs due to a mere change of the “representation” (e.g. transforming the Dirac wave function from the “Dirac representation” to a “Foldy-Wouthuy senre presentation”). We also assert that the energy operator ought to be well defined in a given reference frame at a given time, e.g. by comparing the situation for this operator with the main features of the energy for a classical Hamiltonian particle.

Nilpotent symmetries in supergroup field cosmology

In this paper, we study the gauge invariance of the third quantized supergroup field cosmology which is a model for multiverse. Further, we propose both the infinitesimal (usual) as well as the finite superfield-dependent BRST symmetry transformations which leave the effective theory invariant. The effects of finite superfield-dependent BRST transformations on the path integral (so-called void functional in the case of third quantization) are implemented. Within the finite superfield-dependent BRST formulation, the finite superfield-dependent BRST transformations with specific parameter switch the void functional from one gauge to another. We establish this result for the most general gauge with the help of explicit calculations which holds for all possible sets of gauge choices at both the classical and the quantum levels.

Higher spin extension of cosmological spacetimes in 3D: asymptotically flat behaviour with chemical potentials and thermodynamics

A generalized set of asymptotic conditions for higher spin gravity without cosmological constant in three spacetime dimensions is constructed. They include the most general temporal components of the gauge fields that manifestly preserve the original asymptotic higher spin extension of the BMS$_{3}$ algebra, with the same central charge. By virtue of a suitable permissible gauge choice, it is shown that this set can be directly recovered as a limit of the boundary conditions that have been recently constructed in the case of negative cosmological constant, whose asymptotic symmetries are spanned by two copies of the centrally-extended W$_{3}$ algebra. Since the generalized asymptotic conditions allow to incorporate chemical potentials conjugated to the higher spin charges, a higher spin extension of locally flat cosmological spacetimes becomes naturally included within the set. It is shown that their thermodynamic properties can be successfully obtained exclusively in terms of gauge fields and the topology of the Euclidean manifold, which is shown to be the one of a solid torus, but with reversed orientation as compared with one of the black holes. It is also worth highlighting that regularity of the fields can be ensured through a procedure that does not require an explicit matrix representation of the entire gauge group. In few words, we show that the temporal components of generalized dreibeins can be consistently gauged away, which partially fixes the chemical potentials, so that the remaining conditions can just be obtained by requiring the holonomy of the generalized spin connection along a thermal circle to be trivial. The extension of the generalized asymptotically flat behaviour to the case of spins $s\geq2$ is also discussed.

Quasiprobability distributions in stochastic wave-function methods

Quasiprobability distributions emerging in the stochastic wave-function method of Carusotto et al. [Phys. Rev. A 63, 023606 (2001)] are investigated. We show that there are actually two types of quasiprobabilities. The first one, the ``diagonal Hartree-Fock state projection'' representation, is useful in representing the initial conditions for stochastic simulation in the most compact form. It defines antinormally ordered expansion of the density operator and normally ordered mapping of the observables to be averaged. We completely characterize the equivalence classes of this phase-space representation. The second quasiprobability distribution, the ``nondiagonal Hartree-Fock state projection'' representation, extends the first one in order to achieve stochastic representation of the quantum dynamics. We demonstrate how the differential identities of the stochastic ansatz generate the automorphisms of this phase-space representation. These automorphisms turn the stochastic representation into a gauge theory. The gauge transformations of the quasiprobability master equation are described. In particular, it is the analyticity of the stochastic ansatz that allows one to transform the master equation into the genuine Fokker-Planck equation. We demonstrate how the different variants of the stochastic wave-function method can be constructed, first by choosing a certain optimality criteria or constraints, and then by satisfying these criteria with a suitable choice of gauge. The problem of boundary terms is considered. It is demonstrated that the simple scheme with Fock states of Carusotto et al. is not subjected to this problem.

Disformal invariance of cosmological perturbationsin a generalized class of Horndeski theories

It is known that Horndeski theories can be transformed to a sub-class of Gleyzes-Langlois-Piazza-Vernizzi (GLPV) theories under the disformal transformation of the metric gμ ν → Ω2(ϕ)gμ ν+Γ (ϕ,X) ∇μ ϕ ∇ν ϕ, where Ω is a function of a scalar field ϕ and Γ is another function depending on both ϕ and X=gμ ν∇μ ϕ ∇ν ϕ. We show that, with the choice of unitary gauge, both curvature and tensor perturbations on the flat isotropic cosmological background are generally invariant under the disformal transformation. By means of the effective field theories encompassing Horndeski and GLPV theories, we obtain the second-order actions of scalar/tensor perturbations and present the relations for physical quantities between the two frames. The invariance of the inflationary power spectra under the disformal transformation is explicitly proved up to next-to-leading order in slow-roll. In particular, we identify the existence of the Einstein frame in which the tensor power spectrum is of the same form as that in General Relativity and derive the condition under which the spectrum of gravitational waves in GLPV theories is red-tilted.

Fast convergence of imaginary time evolution tensor network algorithms by recycling the environment

We propose an environment recycling scheme to speed up a class of tensor network algorithms that produce an approximation to the ground state of a local Hamiltonian by simulating an evolution in imaginary time. Specifically, we consider the time-evolving block decimation (TEBD) algorithm applied to infinite systems in 1D and 2D, where the ground state is encoded, respectively, in a matrix product state (MPS) and in a projected entangled-pair state (PEPS). An important ingredient of the TEBD algorithm (and a main computational bottleneck, especially with PEPS in 2D) is the computation of the so-called environment, which is used to determine how to optimally truncate the bond indices of the tensor network so that their dimension is kept constant. In current algorithms, the environment is computed at each step of the imaginary time evolution, to account for the changes that the time evolution introduces in the many-body state represented by the tensor network. Our key insight is that close to convergence, most of the changes in the environment are due to a change in the choice of gauge in the bond indices of the tensor network, and not in the many-body state. Indeed, a consistent choice of gauge in the bond indices confirms that the environment is essentially the same over many time steps and can thus be re-used, leading to very substantial computational savings. We demonstrate the resulting approach in 1D and 2D by computing the ground state of the quantum Ising model in a transverse magnetic field.

Spectral approach to axisymmetric evolution of Einstein's equations

We present a new formulation of Einstein's equations for an axisymmetric spacetime with vanishing twist in vacuum. We propose a fully constrained scheme and use spherical polar coordinates. A general problem for this choice is the occurrence of coordinate singularities on the axis of symmetry and at the origin. Spherical harmonics are manifestly regular on the axis and hence take care of that issue automatically. In addition a spectral approach has computational advantages when the equations are implemented. Therefore we spectrally decompose all the variables in the appropriate harmonics. A central point in the formulation is the gauge choice. One of our results is that the commonly used maximal- isothermal gauge turns out to be incompatible with tensor harmonic expansions, and we introduce a new gauge that is better suited. We also address the regularisation of the coordinate singularity at the origin.

Some Remarks on Quantum Mechanics in a Curved Spacetime, Especially for a Dirac Particle

Some precisions are given about the definition of the Hamiltonian operator H and its transformation properties, for a linear wave equation in a general spacetime. In the presence of time-dependent unitary gauge transformations, H as an operator depends on the gauge choice. The other observables of QM and their rates also become gauge-dependent unless a proper account for the gauge choice is done in their definition. We show the explicit effect of these non-uniqueness issues in the case of the Dirac equation in a general spacetime with the Schwinger gauge. We show also in detail why, the meaning of the energy in QM being inherited from classical Hamiltonian mechanics, the energy operator and its mean values ought to be well defined in a general spacetime.