Abstract
We propose a description of the vacuum in Yang-Mills theory and arrive at a physical interpretation of the pseudoparticle solution and the attendant violation of symmetries. The existence of topologically inequivalent classical gauge fields gives rise to a family of quantum mechanical vacua, parametrized by a -nonconserving angle. The requirement of vacuum stability against gauge transformations renders the vacua chirally noninvariant.
- Received 1 June 1976
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.37.172
©1976 American Physical Society