Lattice vs. continuum: Landau gauge fixing and ’t Hooft-Polyakov monopoles.

Abstract

In this thesis we study the connection between continuum quantum field theory and corresponding lattice field theory, specifically for two cases: Landau gauge fixing and ’t Hooft-Polyakov monopoles. To study non-perturbative phenomena such as the confinement mechanism of quarks and gluons and dynamical chiral symmetry breaking in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), there are two major approaches: the Dyson-Schwinger equations (DSEs) approach, which is based on the covariant continuum formulation, and lattice gauge theory. The strength and beauty of lattice gauge theory is due to the fact that gauge invariance is manifest and fixing a gauge is not required. In the covariant continuum formulation of gauge theories, on the other hand, one has to deal with the redundant degrees of freedom due to gauge invariance and has to fix gauge (most popularly, Landau gauge). There, the gauge-fixing machinery is based on the so-called Faddeev-Popov procedure or more generally, the Becchi-Rouet-Stora-Tyutin (BRST) symmetry. Beyond perturbation theory this is aggravated by the existence of so-called Gribov copies, however, that satisfy the same gauge-fixing condition, but are related by gauge transformations, and are thus physically equivalent. When attempting to fix Landau gauge on the lattice to make a connection with its continuum counterpart, this ambiguity manifests itself in the Neuberger 0/0 problem that asserts that the expectation value of any physical observable will always be of the indefinite form 0/0. We explain the topological nature of this problem and how the complete cancellation of Gribov copies can be avoided in a modified lattice Landau gauge based on a new definition of gauge fields on the lattice as stereographically projected link variables. For compact U(1), where the Gribov copy problem is related to the classification the local minima of XY spin glass models, we explicitly show that there still remain Gribov copies but their number is exponentially reduced in lower dimensional models. We then formulate the corresponding Faddeev-Popov procedure on the lattice, for these models. Moreover, we explicitly demonstrate that the proposed modification circumvents the Neuberger 0/0 problem for lattices of arbitrary dimensions for compact U(1). Applied to the maximal Abelian subgroup this will avoid the perfect cancellation amongst the remaining Gribov copies for SU(N), and so the corresponding BRST formulation is also then possible for generic SU(N), in particular, for the Standard Model groups. For higher dimensional lattices, the gauge fixing conditions for both the standard and the modified lattice Landau gauges are systems of multivariate nonlinear equations, solving which in general is a highly non-trivial task. However, we show that these systems can be interpreted as systems of polynomial equations. They can then be solved exactly by computational Algebraic Geometry, the Groebner basis technique in particular, and numerically by the Polynomial Homotopy Continuation method. ’t Hooft-Polyakov monopoles play an important role in high energy physics due to their presence in grand unified theories and their usefulness in studying non-perturbative properties of quantum field theories through electric-magnetic dualities. In the second part of the thesis, we study adjoint Higgs models, which exhibit ’t Hooft-Polyakov monopoles, and have been extensively analyzed using semi-classical analysis in the continuum. However, to study them in a fully nonperturbative fashion, it is essential to put the theory on the lattice. Here, we investigate twisted C-periodic boundary conditions in SU(N) gauge field theory with an adjoint Higgs field and show that for even N with a suitable twist one can impose a non-zero magnetic charge relative to each of N − 1 residual U(1)’s in the broken phase, thereby creating ’t Hooft-Polyakov magnetic monopoles. This makes it possible then to use lattice Monte-Carlo simulations to study the properties of these monopoles in the full quantum theory and compare them with the existing results in the continuum.