arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to F. A. Dilkes.
We show that the recently demonstrated absence of the usual discontinuity for massive spin 2 with a Lambda term is an artifact of the tree approximation, and that the discontinuity reappears at one loop.
We further develop the new approach, proposed in part I (hep-th/9807072), to computing the heat kernel associated with a Fermion coupled to vector and axial vector fields. We first use the path integral representation obtained for the heat kernel trace in a vector-axialvector background to derive a Bern-Kosower type master formula for the one-loop amplitude with $M$ vectors and $N$ axialvectors, valid in any even spacetime dimension. For the massless case we then generalize this approach to the full off-diagonal heat kernel. In the D=4 case the SO(4) structure of the theory can be broken down to $SU(2) \times SU(2)$ by use of the 't Hooft symbols. Various techniques for explicitly evaluating the spin part of the path integral are developed and compared. We also extend the method to external fermions, and to the inclusion of isospin. On the field theory side, we obtain an extension of the second order formalism for fermion QED to an abelian vector-axialvector theory.
We consider several renormalizable, scale free models in three space-time dimensions which involve scalar and spinor fields. The Yukawa couplings are bilinear in both the spinor and scalar fields and the potential is of sixth order in the scalar field. In a model with a single scalar field and a complex Fermion field in three Euclidean dimensions, the couplings in the theory are both asymptotically free. This property is not retained in 2+1 dimensional Minkowski space, as we illustrate by considering a renormalizable scale-free supersymmetric model. This is on account of the different properties of the Dirac matrices in Euclidean and Minkowski space. We also examine a model in 2+1 dimensional Minkowski space in which two species of Fermions, associated with the two unitarily inequivalent representations of the $2 \times 2$ Dirac matrices, couple in two different ways to two distinct scalar fields. There are two types of Yukawa couplings in this model, and either one or the other of them can be asymptotically free (but not both simultaneously).
We compute the contribution to the modulus of the one-loop effective action in pure non-Abelian Chern-Simons theory in an arbitrary covariant gauge. We find that the results are dependent on both the gauge parameter ($α$) and the metric required in the gauge fixing. A contribution arises that has not been previously encountered; it is of the form $(α/ \sqrt{p^2}) ε_{μλν} p^λ$. This is possible as in three dimensions $α$ is dimensionful. A variant of proper time regularization is used to render these integrals well behaved (although no divergences occur when the regularization is turned off at the end of the calculation). Since the original Lagrangian is unaltered in this approach, no symmetries of the classical theory are explicitly broken and $ε_{μλν}$ is handled unambiguously since the system is three dimensional at all stages of the calculation. The results are shown to be consistent with the so-called Nielsen identities which predict the explicit gauge parameter dependence using an extension of BRS symmetry. We demonstrate that this $α$ dependence may potentially contribute to the vacuum expectation values of products of Wilson loops.
The DeWitt expansion of the matrix element $M_{xy} = \left\langle x \right| \exp -[\case{1}{2} (p-A)^2 + V]t \left| y \right\rangle$, $(p=-i\partial)$ in powers of $t$ can be made in a number of ways. For $x=y$ (the case of interest when doing one-loop calculations) numerous approaches have been employed to determine this expansion to very high order; when $x \neq y$ (relevant for doing calculations beyond one-loop) there appear to be but two examples of performing the DeWitt expansion. In this paper we compute the off-diagonal elements of the DeWitt expansion coefficients using the Fock-Schwinger gauge. Our technique is based on representing $M_{xy}$ by a quantum mechanical path integral. We also generalize our method to the case of curved space, allowing us to determine the DeWitt expansion of $\tilde M_{xy} = \langle x| \exp \case{1}{2} [\case{1}{\sqrt {g}} (\partial_μ- i A_μ)g^{μν}{\sqrt{g}}(\partial_ν- i A_ν) ] t| y \rangle$ by use of normal coordinates. By comparison with results for the DeWitt expansion of this matrix element obtained by the iterative solution of the diffusion equation, the relative merit of different approaches to the representation of $\tilde M_{xy}$ as a quantum mechanical path integral can be assessed. Furthermore, the exact dependence of $\tilde M_{xy}$ on some geometric scalars can be determined. In two appendices, we discuss boundary effects in the one-dimensional quantum mechanical path integral, and the curved space generalization of the Fock-Schwinger gauge.
In this pedagogical note, I present a method for constructing a fully covariant normal coordinate expansion of the gauge potential on a curved space-time manifold. Although the content of this paper is elementary, the results may prove useful in some applications and have not, to the best of my knowledge, been discussed explicitly in the literature.
The standard formulation of a massive Abelian vector field in $2+1$ dimensions involves a Maxwell kinetic term plus a Chern-Simons mass term; in its place we consider a Chern-Simons kinetic term plus a Stuekelberg mass term. In this latter model, we still have a massive vector field, but now the interaction with a charged spinor field is renormalizable (as opposed to super renormalizable). By choosing an appropriate gauge fixing term, the Stuekelberg auxiliary scalar field decouples from the vector field. The one-loop spinor self energy is computed using operator regularization, a technique which respects the three dimensional character of the antisymmetric tensor $ε_{αβγ}$. This method is used to evaluate the vector self energy to two-loop order; it is found to vanish showing that the beta function is zero to two-loop order. The canonical structure of the model is examined using the Dirac constraint formalism.