No Arabic abstract
By evaluating the so-called Bose-ghost propagator, we present the first numerical evidence of BRST-symmetry breaking for Yang-Mills theory in minimal Landau gauge, i.e. due to the restriction of the functional integration to the first Gribov region in the Gribov-Zwanziger approach. Our data are well described by a simple fitting function, which can be related to a massive gluon propagator in combination with an infrared-free (Faddeev-Popov) ghost propagator. As a consequence, the Bose-ghost propagator, which has been proposed as a carrier of the confining force in minimal Landau gauge, displays a 1/p^4 singularity in the infrared limit.
The Bose-ghost propagator has been proposed as a carrier of the confining force in Yang-Mills theories in minimal Landau gauge. We present the first numerical evaluation of this propagator, using lattice simulations for the SU(2) gauge group in the scaling region. Our data are well described by a simple fitting function, which is compatible with an infrared-enhanced Bose-ghost propagator. This function can also be related to a massive gluon propagator in combination with an infrared-free (Faddeev-Popov) ghost propagator. Since the Bose-ghost propagator can be written as the vacuum expectation value of a BRST-exact quantity and should therefore vanish in a BRST-invariant theory, our results provide the first numerical manifestation of BRST-symmetry breaking due to restriction of gauge-configuration space to the Gribov region.
We evaluate the so-called Bose-ghost propagator Q(p^2) for SU(2) gauge theory in minimal Landau gauge, considering lattice volumes up to 120^4 and physical lattice extents up to 13.5 f. In particular, we investigate discretization effects, as well as the infinite-volume and continuum limits. We recall that a nonzero value for this quantity provides direct evidence of BRST-symmetry breaking, related to the restriction of the functional measure to the first Gribov region. Our results show that the prediction (from cluster decomposition) for Q(p^2) in terms of gluon and ghost propagators is better satisfied as the continuum limit is approached.
We study perturbations that break gauge symmetries in lattice gauge theories. As a paradigmatic model, we consider the three-dimensional Abelian-Higgs (AH) model with an N-component scalar field and a noncompact gauge field, which is invariant under U(1) gauge and SU(N) transformations. We consider gauge-symmetry breaking perturbations that are quadratic in the gauge field, such as a photon mass term, and determine their effect on the critical behavior of the gauge-invariant model, focusing mainly on the continuous transitions associated with the charged fixed point of the AH field theory. We discuss their relevance and compute the (gauge-dependent) exponents that parametrize the departure from the critical behavior (continuum limit) of the gauge-invariant model. We also address the critical behavior of lattice AH models with broken gauge symmetry, showing an effective enlargement of the global symmetry, from U(N) to O(2N), which reflects a peculiar cyclic renormalization-group flow in the space of the lattice AH parameters and of the photon mass.
We study the effects of gauge-symmetry breaking (GSB) perturbations in three-dimensional lattice gauge theories with scalar fields. We study this issue at transitions in which gauge correlations are not critical and the gauge symmetry only selects the gauge-invariant scalar degrees of freedom that become critical. A paradigmatic model in which this behavior is realized is the lattice CP(1) model or, more generally, the lattice Abelian-Higgs model with two-component complex scalar fields and compact gauge fields. We consider this model in the presence of a linear GSB perturbation. The gauge symmetry turns out to be quite robust with respect to the GSB perturbation: the continuum limit is gauge-invariant also in the presence of a finite small GSB term. We also determine the phase diagram of the model. It has one disordered phase and two phases that are tensor and vector ordered, respectively. They are separated by continuous transition lines, which belong to the O(3), O(4), and O(2) vector universality classes, and which meet at a multicritical point. We remark that the behavior at the CP(1) gauge-symmetric critical point substantially differs from that at transitions in which gauge correlations become critical, for instance at transitions in the noncompact lattice Abelian-Higgs model that are controlled by the charged fixed point: in this case the behavior is extremely sensitive to GSB perturbations.
By exploiting the similarity between Blochs theorem for electrons in crystalline solids and the problem of Landau gauge-fixing in Yang-Mills theory on a replicated lattice, one is able to obtain essentially infinite-volume results from numerical simulations performed on a relatively small lattice. This approach, proposed by D. Zwanziger in cite{Zwanziger:1993dh}, corresponds to taking the infinite-volume limit for Landau-gauge field configurations in two steps: firstly for the gauge transformation alone, while keeping the lattice volume finite, and secondly for the gauge-field configuration itself. The solutions to the gauge-fixing condition are then given in terms of Bloch waves. Applying the method to data from Monte Carlo simulations of pure SU(2) gauge theory in two and three space-time dimensions, we are able to evaluate the Landau-gauge gluon propagator for lattices of linear extent up to sixteen times larger than that of the simulated lattice. The approach is reminiscent of Fisher and Ruelles construction of the thermodynamic limit in classical statistical mechanics.