On Infravacua and Superselection Theory
arXiv:hep-th/9704212 · doi:10.1063/1.532454
Abstract
In the DHR theory of superselection sectors, one usually considers states which are local excitations of some vacuum state. Here, we extend this analysis to local excitations of a class of "infravacuum" states appearing in models with massless particles. We show that the corresponding superselection structure, the statistics of superselection sectors and the energy-momentum spectrum are the same as with respect to the vacuum state. (The latter result is obtained with a novel method of expressing the shape of the spectrum in terms of properties of local charge transfer cocycles.) These findings provide evidence to the effect that infravacua are a natural starting point for the analysis of the superselection structure in theories with long-range forces.
LaTeX, 18 pages, spelling errors corrected