Confinement and dynamical chiral symmetry breaking in QED3.

Journal Article · Tue Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 2008 · Phys. Rev. C

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.78.055201· OSTI ID:983459

Bashir, A; Raya, A; Cloet, I C; Roberts, C D

We establish that QED3 can possess a critical number of flavors, Nfc, associated with dynamical chiral symmetry breaking if, and only if, the fermion wave function renormalization and photon vacuum polarization are homogeneous functions at infrared momenta when the fermion mass function vanishes. The Ward identity entails that the fermion-photon vertex possesses the same property and ensures a simple relationship between the homogeneity degrees of each of these functions. Simple models for the photon vacuum polarization and fermion-photon vertex are used to illustrate these observations. The existence and value of Nfc are contingent upon the precise form of the vertex but any discussion of gauge dependence is moot. We introduce an order parameter for confinement. Chiral symmetry restoration and deconfinement are coincident owing to an abrupt change in the analytic properties of the fermion propagator when a nonzero scalar self-energy becomes insupportable.

• Research Organization: Argonne National Laboratory (ANL)
• Sponsoring Organization: SC; AMC-FUMEC grant; CA 23 grant Univ. Michoacana de San Nicolis de Hidalgo
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-06CH11357
• OSTI ID: 983459
• Report Number(s): ANL/PHY/JA-61986
• Journal Information: Phys. Rev. C, Journal Name: Phys. Rev. C Journal Issue: 2008 Vol. 78; ISSN 0556-2813; ISSN 1089-490X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: ENGLISH

Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
CHIRAL SYMMETRY
CONFINEMENT
FERMIONS
ORDER PARAMETERS
PHOTONS
PROPAGATOR
RENORMALIZATION
SCALARS
SELF-ENERGY
VACUUM POLARIZATION
WARD IDENTITY
WAVE FUNCTIONS