arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Martin Lavelle.
We investigate the properties of a dressed electron which reduces, in a particular class of gauges, to the usual fermion. A one loop calculation of the propagator is presented. We show explicitly that an infra-red finite, multiplicative, mass shell renormalisation is possible for this dressed electron, or, equivalently, for the usual fermion in the abovementioned gauges. The results are in complete accord with previous conjectures.
The Coulomb gauge has a long history and many uses. It is especially useful in bound state applications. An important feature of this gauge is that the matter fields have an infra-red finite propagator in an on-shell renormalisation scheme. This is, however, only the case if the renormalisation point is chosen to be the static point on the mass shell, p = (m, 0, 0, 0). In this letter we show how to extend this key property of the Coulomb gauge to an arbitrary relativistic renormalisation point. This is achieved through the introduction of a new class of gauges of which the Coulomb gauge is a limiting case. A physical explanation for this result is given.
We consider an electron which is electromagnetically dressed in such a way that it is both gauge invariant and that it has the associated electric and magnetic fields expected of a moving charge. We study the propagator of this dressed electron and, for small velocities, show explicitly at one loop that at the natural (on-shell) renormalisation point, $p_0=m$, ${\bold p}= m{\bold v}$, one can renormalise the propagator multiplicatively. Furthermore the renormalisation constants are infra-red finite. This shows that the dressing we use corresponds to a slowly moving, physical asymptotic field.
It is shown that colour can only be defined on gauge invariant states. Since the ability to associate colour with constituent quarks is an integral part of the constituent quark model, this means that, if we want to extract constituent quarks from QCD, we need to dress Lagrangian quarks with gluons so that the result is gauge invariant. We further prove that gauge fixings can be used to construct such dressings. Gauge invariant dressed quark states are presented and a direct approach to the interquark potential is discussed. Some further aspects of dressing quarks are briefly discussed.
Gauge fixing and the observable fields for both abelian and non-abelian gauge theories with spontaneous breaking of gauge symmetry are studied. We explicitly show that it is possible to globally fix the gauge in the broken sector and hence construct physical fields even in the non-abelian theory. We predict that any high temperature restoration of gauge symmetry will be accompanied by a confining transition.
BRST invariance supplies a sufficient condition for the observability of fields. We show that there is a global obstruction to the observability of quarks and gluons and argue that they will not become observables at finite temperature. We give expressions for quarks and gluons that are, however, {\it perturbatively\/} BRST invariant, and hence locally observable, up to order~$g^2$ and~$g$ respectively.
A sufficient condition for the confinement of quarks is presented. Quarks are shown to be unobservable. Colour singlets are however, observables. The results of deep inelastic scattering are discussed. We argue that QCD does not exhibit a deconfining transition.
The true variables in QED are the transverse photon components and Dirac's physical electron, constructed out of the fermionic field and the longitudinal components of the photon. We calculate the propagators in terms of these variables to one loop and demonstrate their gauge invariance. The physical electron propagator is shown not to suffer from infrared divergences in any gauge. In general, all physical Green's functions are gauge invariant and infrared-finite.
We demonstrate that QED exhibits a previously unobserved symmetry. Some consequences are discussed.