Quantization Of Gauge Theories Research Articles

Compositional quantum field theory: An axiomatic presentation

We introduce Compositional Quantum Field Theory (CQFT) as an axiomatic model of quantum field theory, based on the principles of locality and compositionality. Our model is a refinement of the axioms of general boundary quantum field theory, and is phrased in terms of correspondences between certain commuting diagrams of gluing identifications between manifolds and corresponding commuting diagrams of state-spaces and linear maps, thus making it amenable to formalization in terms of involutive symmetric monoidal functors and operad algebras. The underlying novel framework for gluing leads to equivariance of CQFT. We study CQFTs in dimension 2 and the algebraic structure they define on open and closed strings. We also consider, as a particular case, the compositional structure of 2-dimensional pure quantum Yang–Mills theory.

Identity, individuality and indistinguishability in physics and mathematics.

In this brief survey, we discuss some of the scientific and philosophical problems and debates that underlie the notions of identity, individuality and indistinguishability in physics and mathematics. We critically analyse the different positions for or against the existence of indistinguishable objects in different scientific theories, notably quantum mechanics and gauge theories in physics and homotopy type theory in mathematics. We argue that the different forms of indistinguishability that occur in many areas of physics and mathematics-far from being a problem to be eradicated-exhibit a rich formal structure that plays a key role in the corresponding theories that needs to be properly understood. This article is part of the theme issue 'Identity, individuality and indistinguishability in physics and mathematics'.

Quantum Holonomy Fields

We investigate lattice and continuous quantum gauge theories on the Euclidean plane with a structure group that is replaced by a H-algebra. H-algebras are non-commutative analogues of groups and contain the class of Voiculescu's dual groups. We are interested in non-commutative analogues of random gauge fields, which we describe through the random Holonomy that they induce. We propose a general definition of a Holonomy Field with symmetries displaying the structure of a H-algebra and construct such a field starting from a quantum Lévy process on a H-algebra in the category of probability spaces. We call them Quantum Holonomy Fields. We also consider the more abstract case of an H-algebra in a given algebraic category. This yields the notion of a Categorical Holonomy Field. As an application, we define higher dimensional generalizations of the so-called Master Field on the plane.

Inherent color symmetry in quantum Yang-Mills theory

We present the basic non-perturbative structure of the space of classical dynamical solutions and corresponding one particle quantum states in SU(3) Yang-Mills theory. It has been demonstrated that the Weyl group of su(3) algebra plays an important role in constructing non-perturbative solutions and leads to profound changes in the structure of the classical and quantum Yang-Mills theory. We show that the Weyl group as a non-trivial color subgroup of SU(3) admits singlet irreducible representations on a space of classical dynamical solutions which lead to strict concepts of one particle quantum states for gluons and quarks. The Yang-Mills theory is a non-linear theory and, in general, it is not possible to construct a Hilbert space of classical solutions and quantum states as a linear vector space, so, usually, a perturbative approach is applied. We propose a non-perturbative approach based on Weyl symmetric solutions to full non-linear equations of motion and construct a full space of dynamical solutions representing an infinite but countable solution space classified by a finite set of integer numbers. It has been proved that the Weyl singlet structure of classical solutions provides the existence of a stable non-degenerate vacuum which serves as a main precondition of the color confinement phenomenon. Some physical implications in quantum chromodynamics are considered.

Quantum field theory with ghost pairs

We explicitly show that general local higher-derivative theories with only complex conjugate ghosts and normal real particles are unitary at any perturbative order in the loop expansion. The proof presented here relies on integrating the loop energies on complex paths resulting from the deformation of the purely imaginary paths, when the external energies are continued from imaginary to real values. Contrary to the case of nonlocal theories, where the same integration path was first proposed, for the classes of theories studied here the same procedure is not analytic, but the resulting theory is unitary and unique when the complex ghosts are present in pairs. As an explicit application, a special class of higher-derivative super-renormalizable or finite gravitational and gauge theories turns out to be unitary at any perturbative order if we exclude the complex ghosts from the spectrum of the theory, as it is normally accepted for Becchi-Rouet-Stora-Tyutin (BRST) ghosts. Finally, we propose an analogy between confined gluons in quantum Yang-Mills theory and classical complex pairs in local higher-derivative theories. According to such interpretation, complex ghosts will not appear on shell as asymptotic states because confined in what is natural to name “ghostballs.”

Axiomatic de Sitter quantum Yang-Mills theory with color confinement and mass gap

The analyticity property of de Sitter's quantum Yang-Mills theory in the framework of Krein space quantization, including quantum metric fluctuation, is demonstrated. This property completes our previous work regarding quantum Yang-Mills theory in de Sitter's ambient space formalism, and we can construct an axiomatic quantum field theory similar to Wightman's axioms. The color confinement is proven for the general case, which was previously approved in the early universe. It is shown by using the interaction between gluon fields and the conformal sector of the gravitational field, which is a massless minimally coupled scalar gauge field. The gluon mass results from the interaction between the gluon fields and the massless minimally coupled scalar field as a conformal sector of the gravitational field and then the symmetry-breaking setting due to the vacuum expectation value of the scalar field.

Symmetry in Quantum Mechanics and Gauge Theory for Gravity

To unify gravitational interaction with other three kinds of interaction are a work hadn’t been finished by Albert Einstein and a big problem that human must solve to continue living in the universe.

Noether’s theorems and the energy-momentum tensor in quantum gauge theories

Noether's first and second theorems both imply conserved currents that can be identified as an energy-momentum tensor (EMT). The first theorem identifies the EMT as the conserved current associated with global spacetime translations, while the second theorem identifies it as a conserved current associated with local spacetime translations. This work obtains an EMT for quantum electrodynamics and quantum chromodynamics through the second theorem, which is automatically symmetric in its indices and invariant under the expected symmetries (e.g., BRST invariance) without the need for introducing an ad hoc improvement procedure.

Entanglement-Asymmetry Correspondence for Internal Quantum Reference Frames.

In the quantization of gauge theories and quantum gravity, it is crucial to treat reference frames such as rods or clocks not as idealized external classical relata, but as internal quantum subsystems. In the Page-Wootters formalism, for example, evolution of a quantum system S is described by a stationary joint state of S and a quantum clock, where time dependence of S arises from conditioning on the value of the clock. Here, we consider (possibly imperfect) internal quantum reference frames R for arbitrary compact symmetry groups, and show that there is an exact quantitative correspondence between the amount of entanglement in the invariant state on RS and the amount of asymmetry in the corresponding conditional state on S. Surprisingly, this duality holds exactly regardless of the choice of coherent state system used to condition on the reference frame. Averaging asymmetry over all conditional states, we obtain a simple representation-theoretic expression that admits the study of the quality of imperfect quantum reference frames, quantum speed limits for imperfect clocks, and typicality of asymmetry in a unified way. Our results shed light on the role of entanglement for establishing asymmetry in a fully symmetric quantum world.

Formula for two-loop divergent part of 4-D Yang–Mills effective action

In the paper, we study the two-loop contribution to the effective action of the four-dimensional quantum Yang–Mills theory. We derive a new formula for the contribution in terms of three functions, formed from the Green’s function expansion near the diagonal. This result can be applied to different types of regularization. Therefore, we test it by using the dimensional regularization and cutoff ones and show the consistence with the results, obtained in other works.

Some Classical Models of Particles and Quantum Gauge Theories

The article contains a review and new results of some mathematical models relevant to the interpretation of quantum mechanics and emulating well-known quantum gauge theories, such as scalar electrodynamics (Klein–Gordon–Maxwell electrodynamics), spinor electrodynamics (Dirac–Maxwell electrodynamics), etc. In these models, evolution is typically described by modified Maxwell equations. In the case of scalar electrodynamics, the scalar complex wave function can be made real by a gauge transformation, the wave function can be algebraically eliminated from the equations of scalar electrodynamics, and the resulting modified Maxwell equations describe the independent evolution of the electromagnetic field. Similar results were obtained for spinor electrodynamics. Three out of four components of the Dirac spinor can be algebraically eliminated from the Dirac equation, and the remaining component can be made real by a gauge transformation. A similar result was obtained for the Dirac equation in the Yang–Mills field. As quantum gauge theories play a central role in modern physics, the approach of this article may be sufficiently general. One-particle wave functions can be modeled as plasma-like collections of a large number of particles and antiparticles. This seems to enable the simulation of quantum phase-space distribution functions, such as the Wigner distribution function, which are not necessarily non-negative.

Internal quantum reference frames for finite Abelian groups

Employing internal quantum systems as reference frames is a crucial concept in quantum gravity, gauge theories, and quantum foundations whenever external relata are unavailable. In this work, we give a comprehensive and self-contained treatment of such quantum reference frames (QRFs) for the case when the underlying configuration space is a finite Abelian group, significantly extending our previous work [M. Krumm, P. A. Höhn, and M. P. Müller, Quantum 5, 530 (2021)]. The simplicity of this setup admits a fully rigorous quantum information–theoretic analysis, while maintaining sufficient structure for exploring many of the conceptual and structural questions also pertinent to more complicated setups. We exploit this to derive several important structures of constraint quantization with quantum information–theoretic methods and to reveal the relation between different approaches to QRF covariance. In particular, we characterize the “physical Hilbert space”—the arena of the “perspective-neutral” approach—as the maximal subspace that admits frame-independent descriptions of purifications of states. We then demonstrate the kinematical equivalence and, surprising, dynamical inequivalence of the “perspective-neutral” and the “alignability” approach to QRFs. While the former admits unitaries generating transitions between arbitrary subsystem relations, the latter, remarkably, admits no such dynamics when requiring symmetry-preservation. We illustrate these findings by example of interacting discrete particles, including how dynamics can be described “relative to one of the subystems.”

Ludwig Dmitrievich Faddeev. 23 March 1934—26 February 2017

Ludwig Faddeev was a preeminent mathematical physicist of the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first century. He made fundamental contributions to mathematics and theoretical physics. These included the solution of the quantum three-body scattering problem, groundbreaking work on the quantization of gauge theories, the formulation of Hamiltonian methods for classical integral models, and the creation, with colleagues, of the quantum inverse scattering method which led to the discovery of quantum groups. An incomplete list of important concepts and results named after him include the Faddeev equations, the Faddeev–Popov determinant, Faddeev–Popov ghosts, the Faddeev–Green function, the Gardner–Faddeev–Zakharov bracket, Faddeev–Zamolodchikov algebra and the Faddeev quantum dilogarithm. Faddeev was a charismatic teacher and a natural leader at the Steklov Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the International Mathematical Union.

Gauge Symmetries and Renormalization

We study the perturbative renormalization of quantum gauge theories in the Hopf algebra setup of Connes and Kreimer. It was shown by van Suijlekom (Commun Math Phys 276:773–798, 2007) that the quantum counterparts of gauge symmetries—the so-called Ward–Takahashi and Slavnov–Taylor identities—correspond to Hopf ideals in the respective renormalization Hopf algebra. We generalize this correspondence to super- and non-renormalizable Quantum Field Theories, extend it to theories with multiple coupling constants and add a discussion on transversality. In particular, this allows us to apply our results to (effective) Quantum General Relativity, possibly coupled to matter from the Standard Model, as was suggested by Kreimer (Ann Phys 323:49–60, 2008). To this end, we introduce different gradings on the renormalization Hopf algebra and study combinatorial properties of the superficial degree of divergence. Then we generalize known coproduct and antipode identities to the super- and non-renormalizable cases and to theories with multiple vertex residues. Building upon our main result, we provide criteria for the compatibility of these Hopf ideals with the corresponding renormalized Feynman rules. A direct consequence of our findings is the well-definedness of the Corolla polynomial for Quantum Yang–Mills theory without reference to a particular renormalization scheme.

Quantum Yang-Mills theory in de Sitter ambient space formalism

We present the quantum Yang-Mills theory in the four-dimensional de Sitter ambient space formalism. In accordance with the SU(3) gauge symmetry the interaction Lagrangian is formulated in terms of interacting color charged fields in curved space-time. The gauge-invariant field equations are obtained in an independent coordinate description, and their corresponding color conserved currents are computed. It is shown that the Faddeev-Popov ghost fields appear similarly to their Minkowskian counterparts. We obtain that the free ghost fields are massless minimally coupled scalar fields. The problems of the vacuum state, namely the breaking of de Sitter invariance, and the appearance of infrared divergence in its quantization procedure, are discussed. The existence of an axiomatic quantum Yang-Mills theory within the framework of the Krein space quantization is examined. The infrared divergence regularization of the interaction between the gauge vector fields and the ghost fields is studied in the one-loop approximation. Two different regularization methods are discussed: cut-off regularization and Krein space regularization. A mass term for the gauge vector fields is obtained, which may explain the mass gap and the color confinement problems at the quantum level in de Sitter background. The large curvature limit at the early universe or inflationary epoch is considered.

Holographic evolution with dynamical boundary gravity

Holography has provided valuable insights into the time evolution of strongly coupled gauge theories in a fixed spacetime. However, this framework is insufficient if this spacetime is dynamical. We present a scheme to evolve a four-dimensional, strongly interacting gauge theory coupled to four-dimensional dynamical gravity in the semiclassical regime. As in previous work, we use holography to evolve the quantum gauge theory stress tensor, whereas the four-dimensional metric evolves according to Einstein’s equations coupled to the expectation value of the stress tensor. The novelty of our approach is that both the boundary and the bulk spacetimes are constructed dynamically, one time step at a time. We focus on Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker geometries and evolve far-from-equilibrium initial states that lead to asymptotically expanding, flat or collapsing Universes.

Non‐perturbative Quantum Field Theory and the Geometry of Functional Spaces

AbstractIn this paper we construct a non‐commutative geometry over a configuration space of gauge connections and show that it gives rise to a candidate for an interacting, non‐perturbative quantum gauge theory coupled to a fermionic field on a curved background. The non‐commutative geometry is given by an infinite‐dimensional Bott‐Dirac type operator, whose square gives the Hamilton operator, and which interacts with an algebra generated by holonomy‐diffeomorphisms. The Bott‐Dirac operator and the associated Hilbert space relies on a metric on the configuration space of connections, which effectively works as a covariant ultra‐violet regulator. We show that the construction coincides with perturbative quantum field theory in a local limit. Questions concerning Lorentz invariance and the fermionic sector as well as the issue of existence are left open.

Categorical symmetries at criticality

We study the concept of ‘categorical symmetry’ introduced recently, which in the most basic sense refers to a pair of dual symmetries, such as the Ising symmetries of the 1d quantum Ising model and its self-dual counterpart. In this manuscript we study discrete categorical symmetry at higher-dimensional critical points and gapless phases. At these selected gapless states of matter, we can evaluate the behavior of categorical symmetries analytically. We analyze the categorical symmetry at the following examples of criticality: (i) (2 + 1)d Lifshitz critical point of a quantum Ising system; (ii) (3 + 1)d photon phase as an intermediate gapless phase between the topological order and the confined phase of 3d Z 2 quantum gauge theory; (iii) 2d and 3d examples of systems with both categorical symmetries (either zero-form or one-form categorical symmetries) and subsystem symmetries. We demonstrate that at some of these gapless states of matter the categorical symmetries have very different behavior from the nearby gapped phases.

Proper static potential in classical lattice gauge theory at finite T

We compute the proper real-time interaction potential between a static quark and antiquark in classical lattice gauge theory at finite temperature. Our central result is the determination of the screened real-part of this potential, and we reconfirm the presence of an imaginary part. The real part is intimately related to the back-reaction of the static sources onto the gauge fields, incorporated via Gauss’s law. Differences in the treatment of static sources in quantum and classical lattice gauge theory are discussed.

Loop quantum gravity boundary dynamics and gauge theory

In the context of the quest for a holographic formulation of quantum gravity, we investigate the basic boundary theory structure for loop quantum gravity. In 3 + 1 space-time dimensions, the boundary theory lives on the 2 + 1-dimensional time-like boundary and is supposed to describe the time evolution of gravitational boundary modes—‘edge modes’—living on the two-dimensional boundary of space, i.e. the space-time corner. We do not analyse the boundary structures of general relativity and their quantization, and focus instead on investigating which boundary theories can be supported by the standard loop quantum gravity formalism and spin network states. Focussing on ‘electric’ excitations—quanta of area—living on the corner, we formulate their dynamics in terms of classical spinor variables and we show that the coupling constants of a polynomial Hamiltonian can be understood as the components of a background metric on the 2 + 1-dimensional time-like boundary. This leads to a conjecture of a deeper correspondence between boundary Hamiltonian and boundary metric states. We further show that one can reformulate the quanta of area data in terms of a connection, transporting the spinors on the boundary surface and whose SU(2) component would define ‘magnetic’ excitations (tangential Ashtekar–Barbero connection), thereby opening the door to writing the loop quantum gravity boundary dynamics as a 2 + 1-dimensional gauge theory.