English

A center vortex representaton of the classical SU(2) vacuum

High Energy Physics - Theory 2016-11-10 v3 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

The classical massless SU(2) field theory has an infinite number of gauge equivalent representations of the vacuum. We show that among these there exists a non-perturbative center vortex representation with some similarity to the quantum vacuum of the same theory. This classical SU(2) vacuum consists of a lattice of center vortex pairs combining to triviality. However, this triviality can be broken by perturbations, for example by adding a mass term, or by considering the electroweak theory where the Higgs field does the breaking, or by quantum fluctuations like in QCD.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1605.00603,
  title  = {A center vortex representaton of the classical SU(2) vacuum},
  author = {P. Olesen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1605.00603},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

Some references are added and a more detailed discussion of the quantum case is given