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arXiv · hep-th/9702091

Wilson Loop on a Light-Cone Cylinder

Stephen Pinsky
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Abstract

QCD without matter and quantized on a light-cone spatial cylinder is considered. For the gauge group SU(N) the theory has N-1 quantum mechanical degrees of freedom, which describe the color fux that circulates around the the spatial cylinder. In 1+1 dimensions this problem can be solved analytically. I use the solution for SU(2) to compute the Wilson loop phase on the surface of the cylinder and find that it is equal to g^2 area/4. This result is different from the well known result for flat space. I argue that for SU(N) the Wilson loop phase for a contour on a light-cone spatial cylinder is g^2(area) (N-1)/4. The underlying reason for this result is that only the N-1 dimensional Cartan subgroup of SU(N) is dynamical in this problem.

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Stephen Pinsky. 1997-02-11. Wilson Loop on a Light-Cone Cylinder. https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9702091

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