English

Sphalerons, spectral flow, and anomalies

High Energy Physics - Theory 2015-06-26 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

The topology of configuration space may be responsible in part for the existence of sphalerons. Here, sphalerons are defined to be static but unstable finite-energy solutions of the classical field equations. Another manifestation of the nontrivial topology of configuration space is the phenomenon of spectral flow for the eigenvalues of the Dirac Hamiltonian. The spectral flow, in turn, is related to the possible existence of anomalies. In this review, the interconnection of these topics is illustrated for three particular sphalerons of SU(2) Yang-Mills-Higgs theory.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/0304167,
  title  = {Sphalerons, spectral flow, and anomalies},
  author = {F. R. Klinkhamer and C. Rupp},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/0304167},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

35 pages with revtex4; invited paper for the August special issue of JMP on "Integrability, topological solitons and beyond"

R2 v1 2026-07-22T15:16:45.413Z