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Confinement and massless fermions in two dimensions

Journal Article · · Phys. Rev., D; (United States)

The pseudoparticles of the (1 + 1) -dimensional Abelian Higgs model are known to develop Coulomb interactions in the presence of massless fermions. These interactions lead to a vacuum drastically different from the theta vacuum of the theory with massive fermions. The theta vacuum is known to confine quarks and its behavior is governed by a gas of free pseudoparticles. The main purpose of this note is to study whether the vacuum of the theory with N massless fermions confines quarks in spite of the long-range pseudoparticle forces. To do this we first compute the vacuum functional and show that the massless fermions have transformed the constant theta parameter of the theta vacuum to a sine-Gordon quantum field theta (x) mediating the interactions of pseudoparticles. This equivalence leads to a simple analysis of the vacuum and confinement aspects of the model for both large and small N. The structure of the vacuum changes drastically at a critical value of N = N/sub c/ approx. 2. However, for all N > 0 the gauge symmetry is spontaneously broken and quarks are not confined.

Research Organization:
Enrico Fermi Institute and the Department of Physics, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637
OSTI ID:
6416622
Journal Information:
Phys. Rev., D; (United States), Journal Name: Phys. Rev., D; (United States) Vol. 18:12; ISSN PRVDA
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English