Spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking and fermion mass generation in lattice field theories

Thesis/Dissertation · Fri Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1988

OSTI ID:7272698

De, A

Spontaneous breaking of chiral symmetry is a mechanism for dynamically generating fermion masses. Quantum chromodynamics is believed to have spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking. Although there is both theoretical and experimental evidence for it, the dynamics of chiral symmetry breaking is not understood very well. In this dissertation chiral symmetry breaking is studied in two different systems: the Gross-Neveu (GN) model and the SU(2) gauge-Higgs-fermion system. The GN model is not a gauge theory and has a discrete chiral symmetry. In this investigation the system is seen to undergo spontaneous breakdown of the discrete symmetry and as a result dynamical generation of the elementary fermion mass takes place. Spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking is also observed in the SU(2) gauge-Higgs-fermion model. Here chiral symmetry breaking coincides with the gauge symmetry breaking for fermions in the fundamental representation of the gauge group. This is claimed to be a very important result regarding the dynamics of chiral symmetry breaking. With fermions in a higher (adjoint) representation chiral symmetry breaking is seen to take place before the confinement scale is reached, thus verifying a relatively recent result. Apart from the above physics issues, several technical points pertinent to Lattice field theories are also studied. A dynamical fermion algorithm, namely the molecular dynamics method, is studied.

• Research Organization: Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH (USA)
• OSTI ID: 7272698
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

645400 -- High Energy Physics-- Field Theory
657000* -- Theoretical & Mathematical Physics
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
CALCULATION METHODS
CHIRAL SYMMETRY
FERMIONS
FIELD THEORIES
HIGGS MODEL
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
PARTICLE MODELS
QUANTUM CHROMODYNAMICS
QUANTUM FIELD THEORY
SYMMETRY
SYMMETRY BREAKING