Related papers: The search for ``polarized'' instantons in the vac…
A gauge theory model in which there exists a specific interaction between instantons is considered. An effective action describing this interaction possesses a minimum when the instantons have identical orientation. The considered…
Gravity can arise in a conventional non-Abelian gauge theory in which a specific phenomenon takes place. Suppose there is a condensation of polarized instantons and antiinstantons in the vacuum state. Then the excitations of the gauge field…
Conventional non-Abelian SO(4) gauge theory is able to describe gravity provided the gauge field possesses a specific polarized vacuum state. In this vacuum the instantons and anti-instantons have a preferred direction of orientation. Their…
Conventional non-Abelian SO(4) gauge theory is able to describe gravity provided the gauge field possesses a specific polarized vacuum state in which the instantons have a preferred orientation. Their orientation plays the role of the order…
It is shown that gauge theories are most naturally studied via a polar decomposition of the field variable. Gauge transformations may be viewed as those that leave the density invariant but change the phase variable by additive amounts. The…
In many gauge theories at different values of parameters entering Lagrangian, the vacuum is dominated by coherent condensates of different mutually non-local fields (for instance, by condensates of electric or magnetic charges, or by…
The physics of vortices, instantons and deconfinement is studied for layered superfluids in connection to bilayer quantum Hall systems at filling fraction nu=1. We develop an effective gauge theory taking into account both vortices and…
In the modern theory of polarization, polarization itself is given by a geometric phase. In calculations for interacting systems the polarization and its variance are obtained from the polarization amplitude. We interpret this quantity as a…
One of the most fundamental questions we can ask about a given gauge theory is its phase diagram. In the standard model, we observe three fundamentally different types of behavior: QCD is in a confined phase at zero temperature, while the…
We show that if actions more general than the usual simple plaquette action ($\sim F_{\mu\nu}^2$) are considered, then compact $U(1)$ {\sl pure} gauge theory in three Euclidean dimensions can have two phases. Both phases are confining…
Instantons play a crucial role in understanding non-perturbative dynamics in quantum field theories, including those with spontaneously broken gauge symmetries. In the broken phase, finite-size instanton-like configurations are no longer…
Phase transitions between two competing vacua of a given theory are quite common in physics. We discuss how to construct the space-time solutions that allow the description of phase transitions between different branches (or asymptotics) of…
Considering one-dimensional nonminimally-coupled lattice gauge theories, a class of nonlocal one-dimensional systems is presented, which exhibits a phase transition. It is shown that the transition has a latent heat, and, therefore, is a…
We use gauge/gravity duality to study the thermodynamics of a field theory with asymptotic freedom in the ultraviolet and a fixed point in the infrared. We find a high temperature quark-gluon phase and a low T conformal unparticle phase.…
The quantum theory of polariton condensation in a trapped state reveals a second-order phase transition evidenced by spontaneous polarization parity breaking in sub-spaces of fixed polariton occupation numbers. The emission spectra of a…
We derive an arbitrary-gauge criterion under which condensed matter within an electromagnetic field may transition to a photon condensed phase. Previous results are recovered by selecting the Coulomb-gauge wherein photon condensation can…
We investigate first order phase transitions arising from hidden sectors which are in thermal equilibrium with the Standard Model bath in the Early Universe. Focusing on two simplified scenarios, an higgsed U(1) and a two scalar singlet…
A nonperturbative approach to the vacuum polarization for quantized fermions in external vector potentials is discussed. It is shown that by a suitable choice of counterterms the vacuum polarization phase is both gauge and renormalization…
Gapless fracton phases are characterized by the conservation of certain charges and their higher moments. These charges generically couple to higher rank gauge fields. In this paper we study systems conserving charge and dipole moment, and…
A gravitational instanton is found that can tunnel into a new more stable vacuum phase where diffeomorphism invariance is broken and pitchfork bifurcations develop. This tunnelling process involves a double sphaleron-like transition which…