Quantum effects of a massive 3-form coupled to a Dirac field

Antonio Aurilia and Euro Spallucci
Phys. Rev. D 69, 105005 – Published 7 May 2004
PDFExport Citation

Abstract

The computation of the quantum vacuum pressure must take into account the contribution of zero-point oscillations of a rank-three gauge field Aμνρ. This result was established in a previous paper where we calculated both the Casimir pressure within a region of vacuum simulating a hadronic bag and the Wilson factor for the three-index potential associated with the boundary of the bag. The resulting “volume law” satisfied by the Wilson loop is consistent with the basic confining requirement that the static interquark potential increases with the distance between two test charges. As a sequel to that paper, we consider here the coupling of Aμνρ to the generic current of a matter field, later identified with the spin density current of a Dirac field. In fact, one of the objectives of this paper is to investigate the impact of the quantum fluctuations of Aμνρ on the effective dynamics of the spinor field. The consistency of the field equations, even at the classical level, requires the introduction of a mass term for Aμνρ. In this case, the Casimir vacuum pressure includes a contribution that is explicitly dependent on the mass of Aμνρ and leads us to conclude that the mass term plays the same role as the infrared cutoff needed to regularize the finite volume partition functional previously calculated in the massless case. Remarkably, even in the presence of a mass term, Aμνρ contains a mixture of massless and massive spin-0 fields so that the resulting equation is still gauge invariant. This is yet another peculiar, but physically relevant property of Aμνρ since it is reflected in the effective dynamics of the spinor fields and confirms the confining property of Aμνρ already expected from the earlier calculation of the Wilson loop.

  • Received 14 August 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.69.105005

©2004 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Antonio Aurilia*

  • Department of Physics, California State Polytechnic University–Pomona, Pomona, California 91768, USA

Euro Spallucci

  • Dipartimento di Fisica Teorica, Università di Trieste and INFN, Sezione di Trieste, I-34014 Trieste, Italy

  • *Electronic address: aaurilia@csupomona.edu
  • Electronic address: spallucci@trieste.infn.it

References (Subscription Required)

Click to Expand
Issue

Vol. 69, Iss. 10 — 15 May 2004

Reuse & Permissions
Access Options
Author publication services for translation and copyediting assistance advertisement

Authorization Required


×
×

Images

×

Sign up to receive regular email alerts from Physical Review D

Log In

Cancel
×

Search


Article Lookup

Paste a citation or DOI

Enter a citation
×