Large Gauge Invariance in NonAbelian Finite Temperature Effective Actions

Abstract

We analyze large gauge invariance in combined nonabelian and thermal QFT and their physical consequences for D=3 effective actions. After briefly reviewing the structure of bundles and large gauge transformations that arise in non-simply connected 3-manifolds and gauge groups, we discuss their connections to Chern-Simons terms and Wilson-Polyakov loops. We then provide an invariant characterization of the ``abelian'' fluxes encountered in explicit computations of finite temperature effective actions. In particular we relate, and provide explicit realizations of, these fluxes to a topological index that measures the obstruction to global diagonalization of the loops around compactified time. We also explore the fate of, and exhibit some everywhere smooth, large transformations for non-vanishing index in various topologies.

21 pages, Latex, no figure

References in corpus (6)

• Parity-violating electromagnetic interactions in QED_3 at finite temperature
• The induced Chern-Simons term at finite temperature
• Reflections on Topology - Viewpoints on Abelian Projections
• Large Gauge Ward Identity
• Induced parity violating thermal effective action for (2+1)-dimensional fermions interacting with a non-Abelian background
• Non-Abelian Thermal Large Gauge Transformations in 2+1 Dimensions

Cited by in corpus (3)

• The Polyakov loop and the heat kernel expansion at finite temperature
• Induced parity-odd effective action for a Dirac field on $S^2\times S^1$
• Radiative corrections to the Chern-Simons term at finite temperature in the noncommutative Chern-Simons-Higgs model