Large Gauge Transformations and the Light-Front Vacuum Structure

Abstract

A residual gauge symmetry, exhibited by light-front gauge theories quantized in a finite volume, is analyzed at the quantum level. Unitary operators, which implement the symmetry, transform the trivial Fock vacuum into an infinite set of degenerate coherent-state vacua. A fermionic component of the vacuum emerges naturally without the need to introduce a Dirac sea. The vacuum degeneracy along with the derivation of the theta-vacuum is discussed within the massive Schwinger model. A possible generalization of the approach to more realistic gauge theories is suggested.

10 pages, Latex

References in corpus (4)

• Theta-Vacuum of the Bosonized Massive Light-Front Schwinger Model
• Light-Cone Quantization of the Schwinger Model
• The Configuration Space of Low-dimensional Yang-Mills Theories
• Effect of Zero Modes on the Bound-State Spectrum in Light-Cone Quantisation

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Spontaneous symmetry breaking in light front field theory
• Fermionic Zero Modes and Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking on the Light Front
• The light-front vacuum
• Canonical Formulation of the Light-Front Gluodynamics and Quantization of the Non-Abelian Plane Waves
• Exactly solvable models and spontaneous symmetry breaking