English

Dihedral symmetry in $SU(N)$ Yang-Mills theory

High Energy Physics - Theory 2019-10-16 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We point out that charge conjugation and coordinate reflection symmetries do not commute with the center symmetry of SU(N)SU(N) YM theory when N>2N>2. As a result, for generic values of the θ\theta angle, the group of discrete zero-form symmetries of YM theory on e.g. the spacetime manifold R3×S1\mathbb{R}^3\times S^1 includes the dihedral group D2ND_{2N} which is non-Abelian for N>2N>2. At θ=π\theta = \pi, the non-Abelian factor in the symmetry group is enhanced to D4ND_{4N} due to discrete 't Hooft anomaly considerations. We illustrate these results in YM theory as well as in a simple quantum mechanical model, where we study representation theory as a function of θ\theta angle.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1804.05845,
  title  = {Dihedral symmetry in $SU(N)$ Yang-Mills theory},
  author = {Kyle Aitken and Aleksey Cherman and Mithat Ünsal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1804.05845},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

31 pages, 3 figures. v2: added refs and minor typos fixed