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# 1 Introduction: Noncommutative Geometry and Fundamentals

## 1 Introduction: Noncommutative Geometry and Fundamentals

Consider a charged nonrelativistic particle moving on a plane in an applied constant magnetic field perpendicular to the plane. This system satisfies the Schrödinger equation $`H|\psi =i\mathrm{}_0|\psi `$ with Hamiltonian

$$H=\frac{1}{2m}\left(pgA\right)^2$$
(1.1)
where $`A=\frac{1}{2}B(y,x)`$. Later on we will allow $`A`$ to fluctuate about this value. This Hamiltonian really has two kinds of fields in it: Hilbert-space-valued (“fundamental”) fields such as the wave function, and operator-valued fields such as the vector potential. In a moment we will make a change of variables which will simplify this Hamiltonian at the expense of replacing the coordinates $`x`$ with noncommuting coordinates $`\stackrel{~}{x}`$. The operator-valued fields such as $`A`$ become functions of these noncommuting coordinates, and their dynamics is fairly well-understood. Our objective here is to study how the Hilbert space-valued fields behave both in this system and in the broader context of noncommutative Yang-Mills theory. Following the terminology from the mathematical literature, we refer to these as fundamental fields. This name comes from the fact that if one writes operators as matrices they carry two indices, while these fields carry a single index; more technically, these fields carry the fundamental representation of the algebra of functions on the space.

The change of variables is as follows. The quantity in the parentheses of (1.1) is defined to be the canonical momentum $`\stackrel{~}{p}`$. It obeys

$$[\stackrel{~}{p}_x,\stackrel{~}{p}_y]=[p_x+\frac{1}{2}gBy,p_y\frac{1}{2}gBx]=igB.$$
(1.2)
We can define coordinates which are conjugate to these momenta in the sense that $`[\stackrel{~}{x}^i,\stackrel{~}{p}_j]=\delta _j^i`$. This is satisfied by

$`\stackrel{~}{x}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{gB}}\stackrel{~}{p}_y`$
$`\stackrel{~}{y}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{gB}}\stackrel{~}{p}_x.`$ (1.3)
However, these coordinates do not commute with one another; they satisfy

$$[\stackrel{~}{x}^i,\stackrel{~}{x}^j]=ϵ^{ij}\frac{i}{gB}i\theta ^{ij}.$$
(1.4)
One should be aware at this point that the commutative limit of this theory is not $`\theta 0`$ but $`\theta \mathrm{}`$. This is clear if one substitutes into (1.1), since then the $`\stackrel{~}{p}`$’s turn back into commuting $`p`$’s. The Schrödinger equation for this Hamiltonian is

$$H|\psi =\frac{1}{2m}\left(\stackrel{~}{p}_x^2+\stackrel{~}{p}_y^2\right)|\psi =\frac{1}{2m}\left(\stackrel{~}{p}_x^2+\theta ^2\stackrel{~}{x}^2\right)|\psi =E|\psi $$
(1.5)
and its solutions are 1D simple harmonic oscillator wave functions; but in the limit $`\theta \mathrm{}`$ the eigenfunctions become degenerate and can be brought by a change of basis back to 2D planewaves, which are the solutions of the original equation (1.1) at infinite $`\theta `$.

The potentially confusing equation in the commutative limit is (1.4). This equation is not disastrous simply because $`\stackrel{~}{x}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{y}`$ do not have smooth limits as $`\theta \mathrm{}`$; they both diverge linearly. In this limit those are simply no longer good coordinates. One could, of course, make a change to a different set of coordinates where $`\stackrel{~}{x}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{y}`$ remain healthy in this limit (and their commutator goes to zero) but in this case their conjugate momenta will diverge.111The intuition for this is that in the noncommutative case, both functions and derivatives live in the same algebra, but in the commutative limit derivatives are not functions. So in this limit one expects that one or the other will in some way fail to converge to a good value. Rescaling so that the $`\stackrel{~}{x}`$’s remain good into the commutative limit is somewhat more intuitive from the perspective of looking at large $`\theta `$, but would make some of the field theory expressions below appear unusual.

Given this set of “coordinate” operators, we can verify that they indeed behave somewhat like ordinary coordinates on a space by defining derivatives with respect to them. We use the canonical formula

$$D_i=i\stackrel{~}{p}_i=i\theta _{ij}^1\stackrel{~}{x}^j$$
(1.6)
$`D_i`$ generates derivatives on states in the Hilbert space by multiplication and on operators by commutation. The first statement means that for $`|x`$ an eigenket of $`\stackrel{~}{x}`$ and $`dx`$ infinitesimal,

$$\stackrel{~}{x}\left(1+dxD_x\right)|x=x+dx(1+D_x\stackrel{~}{x})|x=(x+dx)(1+dxD_x)|x,$$
(1.7)
which implies that $`(1+dxD_x)|x=|x+dx`$, so

$$D|x=\underset{\mathrm{\Delta }x0}{lim}\frac{|x+\mathrm{\Delta }x|x}{\mathrm{\Delta }x}.$$
(1.8)
(This is just the usual proof that momenta generate translations) The second statement follows from

$$[D_i,\stackrel{~}{x}^j]=\delta _i^j,$$
(1.9)
which implies that

$$[D_x,a_{mn}\stackrel{~}{x}^m\stackrel{~}{y}^n]=ma_{mn}\stackrel{~}{x}^{m1}\stackrel{~}{y}^n,$$
(1.10)
and the property

$$[D,AB]=[D,A]B+A[D,B]$$
(1.11)
which holds for any operators $`A`$ and $`B`$. Together these mean that $`[D,]`$ takes the derivative of any locally polynomial function of the $`\stackrel{~}{x}^i`$ in the normal manner.

It may appear strange at first glance to say that $`D`$ acts on operators by conjugation, since one typically writes operators as acting on one another by matrix multiplication. What this statement really means is that for any operator $`A`$ and any ket $`|\psi `$,

$$DA|\psi =[D,A]|\psi +AD|\psi $$
(1.12)
which is the product rule for an operator and a ket.

The combination of an algebra of operators (the set of operator-valued functions and their multiplication law), a Hilbert space and a derivative operator is the definition in algebraic geometry of a noncommutative space. In the commutative limit, the algebra of operators turns into the algebra of functions on the space, while the Hilbert space turns into the vector space of $`L^2`$ functions.

This notion of noncommutative space is very closely related to the one that is commonly seen in the physics literature. Typically noncommutative field theories are defined by taking ordinary field theories and replacing the product of two fields with the star product

$$f(x)g(x)=e^{\frac{i}{2}\theta ^{ij}\frac{}{y^i}\frac{}{z^j}}f(y)g(z)|_{y=z=x}.$$
(1.13)
This star product is exactly the multiplication rule one obtains from taking the Taylor expansions of $`f`$ and $`g`$ and replacing the coordinates $`x`$ and $`y`$ with the noncommuting coordinates $`\stackrel{~}{x}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{y}`$ above:

$$f(x)=a_{mn}x^my^na_{mn}W(\stackrel{~}{x}^m,\stackrel{~}{y}^n)$$
(1.14)
where $`W(\stackrel{~}{x}^m,\stackrel{~}{y}^n)`$ represents the Weyl-ordered product of the operators.

We have gone through this somewhat more circuitous operator-based derivation of noncommutative theories since it highlights the presence of fundamental fields and simultaneously makes it clear what needs to be done in order to integrate them into noncommutative field theories. We wish to look at these fields as models of particles charged under noncommutative QED or YM.

Before plunging into this subject, it is useful to look briefly at theories of operator-valued fields. The theory of greatest interest to us is noncommutative QED, which follows from taking the ordinary QED Lagrangian in our background:

$$=\frac{1}{4}F_{\mu \nu }F^{\mu \nu }$$
(1.15)
where $`\mu ,\nu =0,1,2`$ and

$$F_{\mu \nu }=\frac{1}{ig}[_\mu igA_\mu ^0igA_\mu ,_\nu igA_\nu ^0igA_\nu ].$$
(1.16)
$`A_\mu ^0`$ is the background vector potential $`A`$ of (1.1), and the $`_\mu `$ are ordinary partial derivatives. But writing these derivatives in terms of momenta, we can clearly combine them with the $`A^0`$ to form our $`\stackrel{~}{p}_\mu `$. (Since $`A_0^0=0`$, $`\stackrel{~}{p}_0=p_0`$ and the time components are unchanged) Therefore we can rewrite the field strength as

$$F_{\mu \nu }=\frac{1}{ig}[D_\mu igA_\mu ,D_\nu igA_\nu ].$$
(1.17)
As we noted above, this is exactly the field strength one would get if one replaced multiplication with the star product in (1.15). The resulting field theory is noncommutative Yang-Mills.

One point about the solution to this theory, which will be useful later, is that the eigenfunctions of a free boson (the solutions to the Klein-Gordon equation) are essentially the same in noncommutative space and commutative space. The equation is

$$_0^2A_\mu \delta ^{ij}[D_i,[D_j,A_\mu ]]=0$$
(1.18)
and by writing $`A_\mu `$ as a Taylor series in the $`\stackrel{~}{x}`$ one easily verifies that the solutions are

$$A_\mu =e^{i(\omega tq\widehat{x})}$$
(1.19)
where $`\omega ^2q^2=0`$.222The fact that the solutions to the Klein-Gordon equation have the same form as in commutative space is not generic; it depends crucially on the fact that the commutator of two momenta is proportional to the identity. For more general noncommutative spaces the solution would be more complicated.

We now turn to our main subject of interest, the fundamental fields which are minimally coupled to the gauge fields of NCYM. Because both of the cases of physical interest to us (the particle in the magnetic field and string endings on a brane) have spin $`1/2`$, we will spend most of our time examining solutions of the Dirac equation

$$\left(i\partial ̸+m\right)|\psi =0.$$
(1.20)
There are some technical subtleties with the case of finite mass, since in a non-Lorentz-invariant theory (Lorentz-invariance is broken by the magnetic field) these fermions will lead to the violation of Ward identities and possible sicknesses in the theory at higher loops. As such we will begin our analysis by considering the limit where there are no kinetic terms in the Lagrangian. ($`m=\mathrm{}`$, the extreme nonrelativistic limit) This will allow us to study some simple effects like electron mass renormalization and the Coulomb force. At the end of this paper we will discuss the divergence structure of the theory, and at that point it will be at least formally interesting to restore the space derivatives in (1.20). We will do this, although we reserve judgement on the physical relevance of such solutions.

## 2 The Dirac action in the nonrelativistic limit

For the remainder of this paper, we will look exclusively at the properties of systems in noncommutative space, so where there is no risk of confusion we will drop tildes on the $`x`$’s and the $`p`$’s and replace $`D`$ with $``$.

We would like to write the Dirac action for Hilbert space-valued fermions in noncommutative space. If space satisfies

$$[x^i,x^j]=i\theta ^{ij}=i\theta ϵ^{ij}$$
(2.21)
where $`i,j`$ are space indices and $`\theta `$ is a real number, then space derivatives are given by

$$_i=i\theta _{ij}^1x^j.$$
(2.22)
Time derivatives are unchanged from the commutative case. This means that the Laplacian operator is

$$^2_0^2+\theta ^2x^2$$
(2.23)
which is not Lorentz-invariant.

For the reasons discussed above, we will consider states that have no space derivatives on them, and so write an action

$$S=𝑑td^2x\overline{\psi }\left(i\gamma ^0_0+m\right)\psi +L_{YM}.$$
(2.24)
$``$ here is a gauge-covariant derivative coupling to an electromagnetic field:

$$=igA.$$
(2.25)
This action has a gauge symmetry $`\psi (1+i\alpha )\psi `$, $`A^\mu A^\mu ^\mu \alpha `$, where $`\alpha `$ is an infinitesimal operator-valued quantity.

We first get the fermion propagator and eigenstates by solving the system when $`g=0`$. (No coupling constant) Then the Green’s function satisfies

$$\left(i\gamma ^0_0+m\right)G=i\delta (x)G(k)=\frac{i}{\gamma ^0k_0+m}.$$
(2.26)
This is our fermion propagator. The fermion eigenstates follow from solving the Dirac equation

$$\left(i\gamma ^0_0+m\right)\psi =0\psi (t,z)=e^{\pm imt}\left(\begin{array}{c}|\psi _{}\\ |\psi _{}\end{array}\right).$$
(2.27)
Since there is no space dependence of the Dirac equation, the $`|\psi _,`$ are unconstrained and so we are free to choose any basis of square-normalizable functions for them. We will label these by $`|n\alpha \pm `$, where $`n`$ is an index, $`\alpha `$ is the spin state and $`\pm `$ is the sign of the frequency in (2.27). (We will choose a specific basis later when we consider the full Dirac equation; for now any basis for the Hilbert space will do) The completeness relationship for these kets is

$$\underset{n}{}|n\alpha \pm n\alpha ^{}\pm ^{}|=\delta _{\alpha \alpha ^{}}\delta _{\pm \pm ^{}}$$
(2.28)
since the $`|\psi _{}`$ and $`|\psi _{}`$ are independently arbitrary members of the Hilbert space. More generally, we can define off-shell states $`|z_0;n\alpha \pm `$ which are also labelled by a frequency $`z_0`$ which may differ from $`m`$. These show up in sums over intermediate states. Their completeness relationship is

$$\frac{dz_0}{2\pi }\underset{n}{}|z_0;n\alpha \pm z_0;n\alpha ^{}\pm ^{}|=\delta _{\alpha \alpha ^{}}\delta _{\pm \pm ^{}}.$$
(2.29)
Using this basis, the electron propagator between two off-shell states is (figure 1)

$$\frac{i}{\gamma ^0z_0+m}n^{}\alpha ^{}\pm |n\alpha \pm (2\pi )\delta (z_0^{}z_0)=\frac{i}{\gamma ^0z_0+m}(2\pi )\delta (z_0^{}z_0)\delta _{nn^{}}\delta _{\alpha \alpha ^{}}.$$
(2.30)
External fermion legs are associated with factors of the on-shell fermion wave function $`|n\alpha \pm `$ times $`\sqrt{2m}`$. (This factor is for consistency with standard normalizations in field theory)

Finally, let $`g0`$ and let us find the electron-photon vertex. This follows most easily from taking the variation of the action using the usual LSZ formulation, but it is instructive to get it from time-dependent perturbation theory as well. We apply a time-dependent field

$$A^0=\eta (t)e^{i(u_1x_1+u_2x_2)}\eta (t)G(u)$$
(2.31)
where $`x_{1,2}`$ are the coordinates of the noncommutative plane and $`u_{1,2}`$ are $`c`$-numbers. The perturbation in the Hamiltonian is simply $`\mathrm{\Delta }H=gA^0`$ (from minimal coupling in the nonrelativistic theory; that’s ok because since there are no space derivatives we are essentially always working in the nonrelativistic limit) Then from ordinary perturbation theory we get

$$\psi (n,t)=\underset{m}{}\frac{1}{m!}\left(\frac{ig}{\mathrm{}}𝑑t\eta (t)\right)^m\underset{n_1\mathrm{}n_{m1}}{}n\left|G(u)\right|n_1n_1\left|G(u)\right|n_2\mathrm{}n_{m1}\left|G(u)\right|n_0$$
(2.32)
if the particle is initially in the state $`|n_0`$. This corresponds to an insertion of $`ig`$ at each vertex, which is the same as the result which one finds from varying the Lagrangian. However, the momentum-conserving delta function which usually comes from the inner product is changed due to factors of $`G(u)`$. The combined vertex (including momentum factors) is thus

$$ig(2\pi )\delta (z_0^{}z_0u_0)z_0^{};n^{}\alpha ^{}\pm \left|G(u)\right|z_0;n\alpha \pm .$$
(2.33)
The matrix element in (2.33) can most interestingly be evaluated if we expand the fermion states in the (nonorthonormal) momentum basis

$$|z=e^{izx}|0=e^{i\sqrt{\frac{\theta }{2}}\left(za+z^{}a^{}\right)}|0=G(z)|0$$
(2.34)
where the $`a`$ and $`a^{}`$ are SHO ladder operators normalized such that $`[a,a^{}]=1`$:

$$a=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\theta }}(x^1ix^2),$$
(2.35)
so that

$$|n\alpha \pm =d^2zu_{n\alpha \pm }(z)|z.$$
(2.36)
Then the fermion-photon vertex between fermions in momentum eigenstates $`z`$ and $`z^{}`$ is given by

$$ig(2\pi )\delta (z_0^{}z_0u_0)f_1(z,z^{};u)\delta _{\alpha \alpha ^{}}$$
(2.37)
where

$$f_1(z,z^{};u)=z^{}\left|G(u)\right|z=0\left|G(z^{})G(u)G(z)\right|0.$$
(2.38)
This function can be evaluated using the Baker-Hausdorff lemma and (2.34) to be

$$f_1(z,z^{};u)=e^{\frac{\theta }{4}\left(|q|^2\left(q^{}z^{}qz^{}\right)\left(u^{}z+uz^{}\right)\right)}$$
(2.39)
where $`q=z+uz^{}`$ is the momentum nonconservation (“wobble”) at the vertex. Note that nonconservation is Gaussian damped and vanishes in the commutative limit; as $`\theta \mathrm{}`$ this function approaches $`\delta ^2(z^{}zu)`$, justifying the interpretation of $`z`$ as a space momentum. These phases are the analogue for fundamentals of the phase factors $`\mathrm{exp}[i_{i<j}p_ip_j]`$ which occur at gauge boson vertices in NCYM.

The momentum nonconservation follows from the fact that momenta along different directions do not commute, and therefore the labelling of fermion states by two components of momentum was mildly fallacious.

More generally, we can define

$$f_n(z,z^{};p_1,\mathrm{}p_n)=z^{}\left|G(p_1)\mathrm{}G(p_n)\right|z$$
(2.40)
which can be easily evaluated using the Baker-Hausdorff lemma. That tells us that

$$0\left|G(p_1)\mathrm{}G(p_N)\right|0=e^{\frac{\theta }{4}|q|^2}e^{i_{j<i}p_ip_j}$$
(2.41)
where $`q=p_i`$ and $`p_1p_2=\frac{1}{2}\theta _{\mu \nu }p_1^\mu p_2^\nu `$, (The factor of $`2`$ in the wedge product comes from our having defined $`[x^i,x^j]=i\theta ^{ij}`$, which differs by this factor of 2 from that used in some other papers) and so

$$f_n(z,z^{};p_1,\mathrm{}p_n)=e^{\frac{\theta }{4}|q+zz^{}|^2}e^{i\left(_{j<i}p_ip_j+(z+z^{})qzz^{}\right)}.$$
(2.42)
This function will be useful in the calculation of general Feynman diagrams later.

One should note, though, that we did not Fourier transform anywhere to cause the space components of $`z`$ to behave as momenta, whereas we did do so for the time component in solving the Dirac equation. This means that integrals over momenta in loops have measure $`d^3z/2\pi `$, rather than $`(2\pi )^3`$. This corresponds with the absence of a $`(2\pi )^2`$ in the $`\theta \mathrm{}`$ limit of $`f_1`$.

The remaining Feynman rules of the theory are simply those of noncommutative Yang-Mills theory. One should note that only the zero component of the gauge field couples to the fermions.

## 3 The fermion two-point function

The one-loop contribution to the fermion two-point function is given in figure (3).

Using the Feynman rules above, the correction to the propagator is given by

$$(ig)^2\frac{d^3udw_0}{(2\pi )^4}\underset{m\beta }{}z_0^{};n^{}\alpha ^{}\pm \left|G(u)\right|w_0;m\beta \pm \frac{i}{\gamma ^0w_0+m}\frac{ig_{00}}{u^2\mu ^2}w_0;m\beta \pm \left|G(u)\right|z_0;n\alpha \pm $$
(3.43)
where $`\mu `$ is a photon mass introduced as an infrared regulator. We can perform the $`m\beta `$ sum immediately, since they do not appear in any propagators;

$`{\displaystyle \underset{m\beta }{}}z_0^{};n^{}\alpha ^{}\pm \left|G(u)\right|w_0;m\beta \pm w_0;m\beta \pm \left|G(u)\right|z_0;n\alpha \pm `$ $`=`$ $`z_0^{};n^{}\alpha ^{}\pm \left|G(u)G(u)\right|z_0;n\alpha \pm `$ (3.44)
$`=`$ $`z_0^{};n^{}\alpha ^{}\pm |z_0;n\alpha \pm `$
$`=`$ $`(2\pi )\delta (z_0^{}z_0)\delta _{nn^{}}\delta _{\alpha \alpha ^{}}`$
so the two-point function is

$$(ig)^2\frac{d^3u}{(2\pi )^3}\frac{i}{\gamma ^0(z_0u_0)+m}\frac{ig_{00}}{u^2\mu ^2}\delta (z_0^{}z_0)\delta _{nn^{}}\delta _{\alpha \alpha ^{}}$$
(3.45)
This is exactly the commutative result, except for the absence of space momenta in the fermion denominator. (Corresponding to the nonrelativistic limit we have taken)

Therefore due to a fortuitous cancellation the effects of noncommutativity – and specifically, the smearing of momentum conservation – cancels out of this diagram. This is our first example of the insensitivity of fermion properties to the value of $`\theta `$.

Incidentally, the integral above can be performed; using a hard cutoff $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ to regulate momenta in the UV gives

$$\frac{g^2}{4\pi }_\mu ^\mathrm{\Lambda }𝑑u\frac{1}{z_0u+m}\mathrm{log}\frac{u^2+\mu ^2}{u^2\mathrm{\Lambda }^2+\mu ^2}|_{\mu 0}.$$
(3.46)
This is the same as the two-point function in the commutative nonrelativistic theory, and still has the characteristic log divergence.

## 4 Scattering and the Two-Body Hamiltonian

One simple process where we can see a nontrivial effect of momentum smearing is in the scattering of two electrons off each other.

The amplitude is (n.b. we are using a mostly negative metric)

$`iM`$ $`=`$ $`(ig)^2{\displaystyle \frac{d^3u}{2\pi }\overline{u}(z)f_1(z,z^{};u)u(z)\frac{i}{u^2}\overline{u}(w)f_1(w^{},w;u)u(w^{})}`$ (4.47)
$`=`$ $`2img^2\delta (z_0^{}+w_0^{}z_0w_0){\displaystyle d^2u\frac{z\left|G(u)\right|z^{}w\left|G(u)\right|w^{}}{u^2(z_0^{}z_0)^2}}.`$
As $`\theta \mathrm{}`$, the expectation values in the numerator become space-momentum-conserving $`\delta `$-functions, and this converges to the usual result for scattering of particles in two dimensions. The different term corresponds to the uncertainty in the momentum transfer.

We can extract the effective two-body Hamiltonian from this result using the first Born approximation. Noting that the $`f`$’s arise from sandwiching photon momentum operators $`G(u)`$ between external fermion states, the total Hamiltonian is

$$H=g^2\frac{d^2u}{|u|^2}G(u)G(u)$$
(4.48)
which acts on the direct product Hilbert space of two fermions. Since these are identical fermions, the final eigenfunctions must be antisymmetrized.

We can diagonalize this Hamiltonian in a straightforward manner. In terms of SHO ladders for the two factors of the Hilbert space, it is equal to

$$H=g^2\frac{d^2u}{|u|^2}e^{i\sqrt{\frac{\theta }{2}}(ua+u^{}a^{})}e^{i\sqrt{\frac{\theta }{2}}(ub+u^{}b^{})}$$
(4.49)
Since $`a`$ and $`b`$ commute it is useful to define a combined ladder $`A=ab`$ and write

$$H=g^2\frac{d^2u}{|u|^2}e^{i\sqrt{\frac{\theta }{2}}(uA+u^{}A^{})}$$
(4.50)
Now, two pairs of commuting SHO ladders naturally suggests the Schwinger construction of angular momentum.333Thanks to L. Susskind for suggesting the following construction. We define the operators

$`N`$ $`=`$ $`a^{}a+b^{}b`$
$`Q_z`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(a^{}b+b^{}a)`$
$`Q_y`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(a^{}ab^{}b)`$
$`Q_x`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}(b^{}aa^{}b).`$ (4.51)
The operators $`Q_{x,y,z}`$ generate the algebra $`SU(2)`$, and all commute with the total number operator $`N`$. $`N`$ is related to the quadratic Casimir by

$$Q^2=\frac{1}{2}N\left(\frac{1}{2}N+1\right).$$
(4.52)
The eigenstates of the paired SHO’s (which are a basis for the Hilbert space) may be decomposed into an angular-momentum basis

$$|jm=\frac{a^{(j+m)}b^{(jm)}}{\sqrt{(j+m)!(jm)!}}|00$$
(4.53)
where $`|00`$ is the ground state of the SHO. These states are eigenstates of $`N`$ and $`Q_z`$ with eigenvalues $`2j`$ and $`m`$, respectively, and $`j`$ and $`m`$ take the usual values for angular-momentum eigenstates.

These operators are useful because the Hamiltonian commutes with both $`N`$ and $`Q_z`$. The easiest way to see this is to expand the exponential in a Taylor series and do the integral in polar coordinates. We introduce both upper and lower bounds $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and $`\mu `$ on the radial component of this, corresponding to UV and IR cutoffs respectively.

$`H`$ $`=`$ $`g^2{\displaystyle \frac{dud\alpha }{u}e^{iu\sqrt{\frac{\theta }{2}}(e^{i\alpha }A^{}+e^{i\alpha }A)}}`$ (4.54)
$`=`$ $`g^2{\displaystyle \underset{N=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{N!}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\alpha 𝑑uu^{N1}\left(i\sqrt{\frac{\theta }{2}}\right)^N\left(e^{i\alpha }A^{}+e^{i\alpha }A\right)^N}`$
$`=`$ $`g^2{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}𝑑\alpha \left[\mathrm{log}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }}{\mu }}+{\displaystyle \underset{N=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{M=0}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{NN!}}\left(i\mathrm{\Lambda }\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}}}\right)^Ne^{i(N2M)\alpha }C(A^NA^{NM})\right]`$
$`C(A^NA^{NM})`$ is defined to be the sum of all permutations of $`N`$ $`A^{}`$’s and $`(NM)`$ $`A`$’s, treating permutations which differ by swapping two identical elements as distinct. (So there are $`N!`$ terms) We have implicitly let $`\mu 0`$ in the $`N1`$ terms since there are no IR divergences there. The $`\alpha `$ integral then gives $`2\pi \delta (2MN)`$, so

$$H=2\pi g^2\left[\mathrm{log}\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }}{\mu }+\underset{N=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{1}{2N(2N)!}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2\theta }{2}\right)^NC(A^NA^N)\right].$$
(4.55)
Now, the $`C`$ term can be reordered using the commutation relation $`[A,A^{}]=2`$ into a polynomial in $`A^{}A`$. The precise form of this polynomial is messy and involves a good deal of combinatorics, but its leading term is $`(2N)!(A^{}A)^N`$. (Lower terms are subdominant at large $`N`$ and so become weak when $`\theta \mathrm{\Lambda }^2`$ is large) So pulling out an overall factor of $`1/2`$, we find

$$H=\pi g^2[\mathrm{log}\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}{\mu ^2}+\frac{1}{N}(\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2\theta }{2}A^{}A)^N+corrxns.]$$
(4.56)
At this point one should note that, although the integral is an infinite series in $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, it is only logarithmically divergent. This can be seen from the original integral since it is given by a phase factor divided by $`u`$. In fact, if one replaces $`A`$ and $`A^{}`$ in (4.50) by numbers (as they would be in matrix elements of the Hamiltonian) the integral can be done explicitly in terms of Bessel functions, and apart from the overall logarithm term the integral goes to a constant in the large-$`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ limit. The entire $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-dependence is therefore limited to replacing $`\mu `$ and $`\theta `$ with the dimensionless quantities444Note that this is similar to the effective $`\theta `$ of Gubser and Sondhi, hep-th/0006119.

$`\widehat{\mu }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}`$
$`\widehat{\theta }`$ $`=`$ $`\theta \mathrm{\Lambda }^2.`$ (4.57)
If we rewrite $`A^{}A`$ in terms of the angular-momentum operators above, we can then resum the series and find

$$H=\pi g^2[\mathrm{log}\widehat{\theta }(\frac{1}{2}NQ_z)\mathrm{log}\widehat{\mu }^2+corrxns.]$$
(4.58)
The corrections are also polynomial in $`A^{}A=N2Q_z`$ and so the Hamiltonian as a whole commutes with both $`N`$ and $`Q_z`$. Therefore the eigenstates are the angular momentum eigenstates, and (since all of the coefficients in $`C`$ are positive) the ground state is that anihilated by $`N2Q_z`$. These states have $`j=m`$, and therefore correspond to all of the relative angular momentum being in the plane.

The meaning of taking $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{}`$ in this context is not fully clear. It seems most natural to leave $`\theta `$ fixed and so allow $`\widehat{\theta }`$ to go to infinity. If one does this, then the two-fermion effective potential is insensitive to the original value of $`\theta `$. A second possibility is to let $`\theta 0`$ so that $`\widehat{\theta }`$ remains fixed. This parameter is known to be an order parameter in the striping phase transition of scalar $`\varphi ^4`$ theory in noncommutative space,  and it may have relevance in this system as well.

The $`\widehat{\mu }`$ dependence of this Hamiltonian is the ordinary IR divergence of the Coulomb potential in 2D, and represents an overall constant which is uninteresting.

### 4.1 A check

Excited states can also be reached by acting with $`A^{}`$ on a ground state. A good check on the finiteness of this whole matter (as well as on $`\theta `$-blindness) is to evaluate $`H`$ in such a state. The normalized states are

$$\frac{1}{\sqrt{2^NN!}}A^N|0$$
(4.59)
and so

$$H=g^2\frac{d^2u}{|u|^2}\frac{1}{2^NN!}e^{|u|^2\theta /2}0\left|A^Ne^{iuA/\sqrt{\theta /2}}e^{iu^{}A^{}/\sqrt{\theta /2}}A^N\right|0$$
(4.60)
where we have reorganized $`G`$ using the Baker-Hausdorff lemma. This is then

$`H`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g^2}{2^NN!}}{\displaystyle \frac{d^2u}{|u|^2}\left(i\sqrt{\frac{2}{\theta }}\right)^{2N}e^{|u|^2\theta /2}\left(^N\overline{}^N\right)0\left|e^{iuA/\sqrt{\theta /2}}e^{iu^{}A^{}/\sqrt{\theta /2}}\right|0}`$ (4.61)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g^2}{2^NN!}}{\displaystyle \frac{d^2u}{|u|^2}e^{|u|^2\theta /2}\left(\overline{}\right)^N\left[e^{|u|^2\theta /2}0\left|G(u)\right|0\right]}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g^2}{2^NN!}}{\displaystyle \frac{d^2u}{|u|^2}e^{|u|^2\theta /2}\left(\overline{}\right)^Ne^{|u|^2\theta }}.`$
The evaluation of the derivatives is a simple matter of combinatorics, and the integral may be evaluated in polar coordinates as above. The result is

$`H`$ $`=`$ $`2\pi g^2{\displaystyle \underset{m=0}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{N!}{(Nm)!(m!)^2}}(\theta )^m{\displaystyle 𝑑uu^{2m1}e^{|u|^2\theta /2}}`$ (4.62)
$`=`$ $`2\pi g^2\left[{\displaystyle \frac{du}{u}e^{|u|^2\theta /2}}+{\displaystyle \underset{m=1}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{(1)^{m1}N!}{(Nm)!mm!}}\right].`$
The first term is infrared divergent but is a constant which may be removed from the Hamiltonian; it is the analogue of the $`\mathrm{log}\widehat{\mu }`$ term above. It is independent of $`N`$ and so after this removal all of the energies are finite.

## 5 Space momenta

In the next section, we will derive general rules for the divergence structure of NCYM with fundamental fermions analogous to the rules for planar and nonplanar graphs in pure NCYM. While we could do this now, it is interesting to generalize our considerations to systems where the fermions have space momenta, and particle-antiparticle creation is allowed. So this section describes how to add those momenta and get the general Feynman rules for the theory.

We will begin by solving the first-quantized Dirac equation for fundamental fermions with kinetic energy. The solutions will be related to SHO eigenfunctions. The major features which distinguishes these fermions from those in commutative space are lack of Lorentz-invariance and the discreteness of the solution set. Once we have these solutions, we will write down the second-quantized Lagrangian and derive Feynman rules. With a few simple manipulations, we will show that these rules are almost identical to those in the commutative theory, except that (1) fermion momentum integrals are replaced by sums over solutions to the Dirac equation, and (2) momentum-conserving $`\delta `$-functions will be replaced with a smeared function which includes phases. These phases will be key in our analysis of divergences in the next section.

### 5.1 The Dirac equation

The Dirac equation for fundamental fermions is

$$(i\partial ̸+m)\psi =0.$$
(5.63)
Here $`\psi `$ is an element of the Hilbert space rather than the algebra, so $``$ acts on $`\psi `$ by multiplication rather than commutation. We pick metric $`\eta =+`$ and $`\gamma _0=\sigma _3`$, $`\gamma _1=i\sigma _1`$, $`\gamma _2=i\sigma _2`$. We write $`\psi (x,t)=e^{i\omega t}\psi (x)`$, and multiply the equation on the left by $`\gamma _0`$. Using $`_i=i\theta _{ij}^1x^j`$ this means

$$\left(\begin{array}{cc}\omega +m& \sqrt{\frac{2}{\theta }}a^{}\\ \sqrt{\frac{2}{\theta }}a& \omega m\end{array}\right)\psi =0$$
(5.64)
Setting the determinant equal to zero, we find that this is solved by

$$\psi =\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\omega (\omega +m)}}\left(\begin{array}{c}\sqrt{\frac{2n}{\theta }}|n\\ (\omega +m)|n1\end{array}\right)$$
(5.65)
where

$$\omega ^2=m^2+\frac{2n}{\theta }.$$
(5.66)
The two signs of $`\omega `$ correspond, as usual, to particle and antiparticle solutions, and $`|n`$ are SHO eigenstates. We label these states as $`|n\alpha \pm `$, where $`n`$ is the SHO level, $`\alpha `$ is the spin index, and $`\pm `$ is the sign of $`\omega `$. Off-shell solutions are characterized by other values of $`\omega `$.

It is again possible to write these functions as linear combinations of momentum eigenstates $`|z=G(z)|0`$, which will be useful later but which we will not do explicitly here; we will simply note that there are functions such that

$$|n\alpha \pm =d^2zu_{n\alpha \pm }(z)|z.$$
(5.67)
The second quantization of this system proceeds in the usual way. We write a fermion operator

$$\mathrm{\Psi }=\underset{n\alpha }{}a_{n\alpha }|n\alpha ++b_{n\alpha }^{}|n\alpha $$
(5.68)
where $`a_{n\alpha }`$ and $`b_{n\alpha }`$ are ladder operators satisfying canonical anticommutation relations. The Hamiltonian density is

$$=i\gamma +m$$
(5.69)
(so that $`|n\alpha \pm =\pm \gamma ^0\omega (n,\alpha )|n\alpha \pm `$), and the overall Hamiltonian is

$$H=\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}\mathrm{\Psi }=\underset{n\alpha }{}\omega (n,\alpha )\left(a_{n\alpha }^{}a_{n\alpha }+b_{n\alpha }^{}b_{n\alpha }\right).$$
(5.70)
(Plus, as usual, an infinite normal ordering constant)

The interactions with the electromagnetic field come from the covariant derivative, in a term

$$L_{int}=g\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}\mathit{}\mathrm{\Psi }.$$
(5.71)
When we quantize $`A`$, we solve the Klein-Gordon equation for algebra-valued functions (rather than Hilbert-space valued functions like $`\psi `$) and as is well-known the solutions to that are plane-waves $`G(z)=e^{izx}`$.

### 5.2 Feynman rules

Instead of deriving the Feynman rules for this system in momentum space, though, we will leave most of the quantities as operators and take explicit representations only when performing diagrammatic integrals. (This will make some properties of the system more evident) Thus to a fermion propagator we associate the factor

$$\text{}=S_F=\frac{i}{i\partial ̸+m}.$$
(5.72)
(with appropriate placement of $`iϵ`$’s to fix the poles properly) External fermion lines are associated with terms $`|n\alpha \pm `$ (for incoming lines) or $`n\alpha \pm |`$ (for outgoing lines.) Internal fermion loops are associated with bracketing complete expressions in $`n\alpha \pm |`$ and $`|n\alpha \pm `$ and summing over $`(n,\alpha )`$, which is simply a trace over fermion states; there is also the usual factor of $`1`$ for fermion loops coming from anticommutation. The fermion-fermion-photon vertex comes from expanding $`A`$ in momentum states and varying the Lagrangian, giving a term

$$\text{}=ig(2\pi )\delta (z_0^{}z_0u_0)\gamma _{\alpha \dot{\beta }}^\mu G(u),$$
(5.73)
where $`\mu `$ is the polarization of the photon, $`u`$ is its momentum, and $`\alpha `$ and $`\dot{\beta }`$ are the spin states of the incoming and outgoing fermion lines, respectively.

Since vertices and propagators are now operator-valued rather than number-valued, one should keep in mind the following rules for assembling them into diagrams. One associates a separate “channel” with each fermion line, which is capped at either end either by bras and kets representing the external fermion states, or by the internal states which are summed over to form a trace for internal lines. Then one adds the various relevant operators $`S_F`$ and $`ig\gamma G`$ in the order in which they appear, starting from the incoming point and going to the outgoing point. In the case of internal fermion lines, it does not matter at which point one begins since the trace is cyclically symmetric.

As an example of how these rules are applied, consider the diagram in figure 3 below. The diagram has three fermionic “channels” and several photon lines. Its value is

$`i`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{d^3pd^3qd^3r}{(2\pi )^9}(1)\underset{l,\gamma }{}\frac{i^3}{q^2r^2p^2}n^{}\alpha ^{}+\left|(ig\gamma ^\mu )G(q)S_F(ig\gamma ^\nu )G(p)\right|n^{}\alpha ^{}+}`$ (5.74)
$`l\gamma +\left|S_F(ig\gamma _\mu )G(q)S_F(ig\gamma ^\rho )G(r)\right|l\gamma +`$
$`m^{}\beta ^{}\left|(ig\gamma _\rho )G(r)S_F(ig\gamma _\nu )G(p)\right|m\beta `$
We can reduce these operator rules to ordinary Feynman rules by using some simple identities. First, from $`[_i,G(u)]=iu_iG(u)`$ it follows that

$$G(u)\frac{i}{i\partial ̸+m}=\frac{i}{i\partial ̸+\mathit{}+m}G(u).$$
(5.75)
So consider some general Feynman diagram. It will have a photon part which is possibly very complicated, and for each fermion line it will have a term that looks like

$$n^{}\alpha ^{}\pm \left|S_FG(p_1)S_F\mathrm{}G(p_N)S_F\right|n\alpha \pm .$$
(5.76)
The outer states will either be fixed states (for external lines) or traced over (for internal lines). We first push all of the fermion propagators to the left, giving

$$n^{}\alpha ^{}\pm \left|\frac{i}{i\partial ̸+m}\frac{i}{i\partial ̸+\mathit{}_1+m}\mathrm{}\frac{i}{i\partial ̸+\mathit{}_i+m}G(p_1)\mathrm{}G(p_N)\right|n\alpha \pm .$$
(5.77)
Now we insert a complete set of momentum eigenstates after the initial bra, expressing the state $`|n\alpha \pm `$ in terms of momentum eigenstates. This gives us

$$𝑑z\overline{u}_{n^{}\alpha ^{}\pm }(z)\frac{i}{\mathit{}+m}\mathrm{}\frac{i}{\mathit{}+\mathit{}_i+m}z\left|G(p_1)\mathrm{}G(p_N)\right|n\alpha \pm .$$
(5.78)
So clearly the propagators are exactly the same as in the commutative case. The term involving the $`G`$’s is the analogue of the momentum-conserving $`\delta `$-function, which after expanding $`|n\alpha \pm `$ in a momentum basis is precisely one of the $`f_n`$’s of equation (2.42).

Using these rules, the diagram of figure 3 is equal to

$`i`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle }{\displaystyle \frac{d^3pd^3qd^3r}{(2\pi )^9}}(1){\displaystyle \underset{l,\gamma }{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{q^2r^2p^2}}[\overline{u}_{n^{}\alpha ^{}+}(z_1^{})(ig\gamma ^\mu ){\displaystyle \frac{i}{\mathit{}_1^{}\mathit{}+m}}(ig\gamma ^\nu )`$ (5.79)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{}{}}u_{n\alpha +}(z_1)f_2(z_1,z_1^{};p,q)\left]\right[\overline{u}_{l\gamma +}(z_2^{}){\displaystyle \frac{i}{\mathit{}_2^{}+m}}(ig\gamma _\mu ){\displaystyle \frac{i}{\mathit{}_2^{}+\mathit{}+m}}`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{}{}}(ig\gamma ^\rho )u_{l\gamma +}(z_2)f_2(z_2,z_2^{};q,r)\left]\right[\overline{u}_{m^{}\beta ^{}}(z_3^{})(ig\gamma _\rho ){\displaystyle \frac{i}{\mathit{}_3^{}+\mathit{}+m}}`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{}{}}(ig\gamma _\nu )u_{m\beta }(z_3)f_2(z_3,z_3^{};p,r)]`$
where we have implicitly integrated over the momenta $`z_i`$. As anticipated, the only difference between this and the commutative case is the bound-state nature of the $`u_{n\alpha \pm }`$ and the replacement of momentum-conserving $`\delta `$-functions with $`f_n`$’s.

## 6 Divergence structure

We wish to find the divergence structure of a general NCYM diagram involving fermions. This would be the analogue of the rule that planar graphs in NCYM have only phase factors corresponding to external legs, while nonplanar graphs have phase factors inside loops and are therefore less divergent.  This followed from introducing a double-line notation in which lines are associated with their phase factors, and noting that changes in the diagram which preserve planarity leave all of these factors invariant. One could then rearrange the diagrams into a tree (out of which external lines may come), a sequence of tadpoles, and a nonplanar region. The phase factors from the tree and the tadpoles all cancel out except for some overall factors on the outer legs, whereas the phase factors in the nonplanar region cause all loop integrals resulting therefrom to be strongly damped. The resulting integrals can be evaluated and contains both the divergences familiar from the commutative theory and some terms specific to noncommutative Yang-Mills.  We would like to extend this argument to add single-line diagrams corresponding to fundamentals. We will see that the rule for fermions is that they never contribute additional internal phase factors; in fact, at the level of double-line diagrams their influence can always be replicated by certain planar networks (trees) of gauge fields.

The argument is as follows. We first consider the issue of momentum nonconservation. If in any subdiagram of a given diagram the wobble ($`q+zz^{}`$ in (2.42)) is nonzero, that diagram contains both Gaussian damping factors and phase factors containing both $`q`$ and fermion momenta. Therefore, the leading divergences come from terms where there is no nonconservation, and so the only effect of the $`f_n`$ is to introduce phase factors at each fermion-photon vertex.

Because this is the only remaining difference from the commutative case,555When compared to a commutative system where the fermions are in appropriate bound-state wavefunctions from here on out we will be concerned only with phase factors and can therefore draw simplified diagrams where photons are represented by double lines, fermions by single lines, and each vertex is associated simply with its phase factor $`e^{iz^{}z}`$. (cf. (2.39) when $`q=0`$) We draw shaded circles for each vertex to make their location more clear in the figures.

The procedure for evaluating phase contributions to divergences is as follows. Consider an arbitrary diagram with photon and fermion lines.

1. First, “purely internal” networks of fermions can be integrated out. These are defined as networks of fermion lines which do not include any external fermions. Since fermions can only attach at $`\psi \psi \gamma `$ vertices, such networks must form polygons with $`N`$ external photon legs. If the momenta are as shown in figure (4) below, the diagram will contain a term

$`{\displaystyle 𝑑z𝑑z^{}n^{}\alpha ^{}+|z^{}z|n\alpha +\mathrm{exp}i\left(\underset{j<i}{}q_iq_j+(z+z^{})\left(q_i\right)zz^{}\right)\mathrm{}}`$ (6.80)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑z𝑑z^{}n^{}\alpha ^{}+|z^{}z|n\alpha +\mathrm{exp}i\left(\underset{j<i}{}q_iq_jzz^{}\right)\mathrm{}}.`$
since the wobble $`q_i+zz^{}=0`$. This diagram is clearly most divergent when $`zz^{}=0`$, where it becomes equal to its commutative-space value times an overall phase factor

$$\mathrm{exp}i\underset{j<i}{}q_iq_j.$$
(6.81)
Terms with phase factors contribute only finite amounts, since the exponential phase factor can cancel any power-law divergence.

This phase factor has two important properties. First, it does not involve the loop momentum at all, so there is no damping of this loop integral relative to the commutative theory. Thus this loop is as divergent as usual. Second, the phase factor for this effective $`N`$-photon vertex is exactly equal to the phase factor one would get from a planar subdiagram (a tree) of pure NCYM with $`N`$ external legs. We can therefore integrate out this fermion loop, with the diagram receiving whatever divergences would be appropriate in the commutative theory, and replace it with such an effective tree for the purpose of phase analysis.
2. Now we consider external fermion legs. An external fermion can attach to the rest of the diagram in one of two ways: (fig. 5)

If it attaches by (b), then there is a single fermion line entering the rest of the diagram which again must attach via either (a) or (b). This process repeats indefinitely until it is cut off by a connection of type (a). Therefore all external fermion connections must take the form of fig. 6.

This is an effective $`N`$-photon 2-fermion vertex, whose phase may be easily calculated. Using the momentum conventions given in the figure, the phase is

$`\varphi `$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}i[(w_1+q_1)w_1+(w_1+q_1+q_2)(w_1+q_1)+\mathrm{}`$ (6.82)
$`+(w_1+q_1+\mathrm{}q_N)(w_1+q_1+\mathrm{}q_{N1})]`$
$`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}i\left[q_1w_1+q_2(w_1+q_1)+\mathrm{}q_N(w_1+q_1+\mathrm{}q_{N1})\right]`$
$`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}i\left[w_2w_1+{\displaystyle \underset{j<iN}{}}q_iq_j\right]`$
where we have used the fact that $`w_2=w_1+q_i`$. But this phase is precisely the phase that would come from an $`(N+1)`$-photon vertex attached to a single fermion-fermion-photon vertex, so we can replace this effective vertex with precisely that. (As before, the $`(N+1)`$-photon vertex can then be reduced to a planar network of NCYM vertices)
3. We have therefore eliminated all internal fermion lines in favor of planar networks of NCYM vertices, and attached all external fermion lines with fermion-fermion-photon vertices where both fermions are external. It is therefore possible to now perform the ordinary channel-swapping moves of NCYM to rearrange the purely photonic part of the diagram into a tree, some tadpoles, and a nonplanar part, with some of the external photon lines now “capped” with a fermion-fermion-photon vertex. From the ordinary evaluation of divergences, we know that the nonplanar part will be suppressed by phase factors inside loops, and the divergences will be dominated by diagrams whose photonic part is purely planar. Since internal fermion lines always contribute planar NCYM effective diagrams, we find that fermions never decrease the degree of divergence in a graph.

The theory of fundamentals on the noncommutative plane is therefore a straightforward extension of ordinary NCYM theory. The behavior is not qualitatively surprising, reducing simply to the combination of bound-state wavefunctions and the momentum nonconservation which we have seen in several forms. The major open question at this point is the extent to which this can be used to construct physically interesting and realistic models of systems in strong background fields, which will hopefully further elucidate the meaning of spacetime noncommutativity in physics.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Leonard Susskind for extensive discussions and assistance on this work, especially on the subjects of sections 2 and 4. Thanks also to Nelia Mann for reading a preliminary version of this file and making numerous helpful suggestions. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant PHY-9870015.


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# INTEGRAL and Nuclear Astrophysics

## 1 Why a new gamma-ray astronomy mission?

Gamma-ray astronomy explores the most energetic phenomena that occur in nature and addresses some of the most fundamental problems in astrophysics. It embraces a great variety of gamma-ray continuum and gamma-ray line production processes: nuclear excitation, radioactivity, positron annihilation and Compton scattering; and an even a greater diversity of astrophysical objects and phenomena: nucleosynthesis, nova and supernova explosions, the interstellar medium, cosmic-ray interactions and sources, neutron stars, black holes, gamma-ray bursts, active galactic nuclei and the cosmic gamma-ray background. Not only do gamma rays allow us to see deeper into these objects, but the bulk of the power radiated by them is often at gamma-ray energies.

In the low-energy gamma-ray band, line-forming processes such as nuclear excitation, radioactivity, positron annihilation, cyclotron emission and absorption become important, and when used as astrophysical tools. Unique astrophysical information is contained in the spectral shift, line width, and line profiles. Detailed studies of these processes require the resolving power of a germanium spectrometer. Lower-resolution spectrometers (e.g. SIGMA, OSSE, COMPTEL) did not have sufficient energy resolution to permit a study of the parameters of these lines. The last high-resolution space instrument, that on HEAO-3 in 1979-80, was 100 times less sensitive than required to tackle the scientific subjects outlined below. Solid observational and theoretical grounds already exist for predicting detectable line emission from such varied celestial objects as the Central region of the Galaxy, the interstellar medium, compact objects, novae and supernovae and a variety of active galactic nuclei.

## 2 Nuclear astrophysics and gamma-ray astronomy

### 2.1 Generalities

The observability of gamma-ray lines is conditionned by three factors:

a. Thermonuclear synthesis in stellar furnaces of fresh radioisotopes in significant abundance (N).

b. Quick removal (before decay) from the dense medium of birth to avoid burning and allow transfer to low density regions, transparent to gamma rays.

c. Lifetime sufficiently short ( radioactive constant, $`\lambda `$, high enough) in order to get measurable activity ($`\lambda `$N), i.e. enough photons to be detected at galactic/cosmic distances.

The list of candidates consequently is rather brief; it includes principally $`{}_{}{}^{56}Co`$, $`{}_{}{}^{44}Ti`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{26}Al`$ (the lifetimes are respectively 112 days, 87 years, $`10^6`$ years).

The observation of nuclides through the gamma-ray lines emitted in the course of their natural decay in the circumstellar/interstellar media reveals the recent nucleosynthesis activities on time scales comensurate to their lifetime. According to the species involved, one can probe individual events, like supernovae and novae or collective effects of these objects at galactic scale. The two limiting cases are the following:

i) if the lifetime is short($`{}_{}{}^{56}Co`$) compared to the frequency of the relevant event (SN explosion in this case) one has the possibility of observing individual events.

ii) if the lifetime is long compared to the frequency of fertile events ($`{}_{}{}^{26}Al`$) one should observe the collective effect of many events under the form of a diffuse galactic emission. For lifetimes of the order of the recurrence time (rate) , i.e. $`{}_{}{}^{22}Na`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{44}Ti`$, the case is intermediate. One should then observe diffuse extended sources.

The line profiles offer a wealth of information on the detailed physics/ dynamics of the astrophysical sources of unstable isotopes  . Gamma ray lines are indeed ideal diagnostics of nucleosynthesis. Stringent constraints on stellar and supernova yields can be set by specific line intensity or even upper limits on these. Gamma-ray line astronomy, in principle should allow to test both quiescent (hydrostatic) nucleosynthesis (in AGB and Wolf- Rayet stars) and explosive nucleosynthesis (novae and supernovae). We focus here on supernovae (for the other objects see J. Knodlseder and M. Hernanz, this conference). We are concerned here by the high potential of these exploding objects in both the synthesis and acceleration of nuclei.

### 2.2 Gamma-ray lines and supernova physics

A highligt of gamma-ray line astronomy has been the observation of signatures of the radioactive decay (weak interaction) of $`{}_{}{}^{56,57}Co`$ isotopes, implied in the $`{}_{}{}^{56,57}Ni`$ chain ending at $`{}_{}{}^{56,57}Fe`$ from the supernova SN1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Radioactive decay proceeds, in all cases considered, through the weak interaction ($`\beta ^+`$ decay or electron capture) transforming inside a nucleus a proton into neutron. Indeed the synthesized species, due to the physics involved, are too proton rich to be stable. This proton richness is itself related to the fact that most of the reactions that built complex nuclei are induced by protons and alphas. This is especially true for explosive nucleosynthesis in supernovae, where the symetrical $`{}_{}{}^{44}Ti`$ (22 protons and 22 neutrons) and $`{}_{}{}^{56}Ni`$ (28 protons, 28 neutrons) are formed by successive alpha captures on $`{}_{}{}^{28}Si`$.

All kinds of supernovae can be tested (Ia,b,c and II) both through their radioactivity and also their (collective) particle acceleration effect.

i) individual SNII: There is very little chance to capture the cobalt-iron gamma-ray line emission of a new core collapse supernova during the lifetime of the present generation of gamma-ray satellite. However young supernova remnants could show up through the $`{}_{}{}^{44}Ti`$ lines and through superbubbles excavated in the interstellar medium by the combined effect of strong stellar winds of massive stars and explosions. Due to its lifetime, of the order of a century, $`{}_{}{}^{44}Ti`$ is well suited to discover young SNR hidden in the galactic dust. $`{}_{}{}^{44}Ti`$ decay lines from recent SNR (Cas A and Vela junior) without optical counterpart have already been detected. Thus we have at least two cases of hidden supernovae. How many others will the INTEGRAL mission discover? The estimates are rather uncertain . The detailed exploration of the known sources, associated to X ray data from Chandra and XMM, should allow to derive the distribution of $`{}_{}{}^{44}Ti`$ and its mass (taking into account the fact that its lifetime against electron capture is possibly modified by very high state of ionisation of the emitting regions), setting important constraints on the physics of the explosion.

ii) collective effects of SNII in Superbubbles: Non thermal nucleosynthesis of Lithium-Beryllium-Boron (see M. Cassé, this conference) could also be accompanied by specific (rather wide) gamma ray lines, specially those of C\*, O\* and the LiBe feature arising from the alpha + alpha reaction  . Indeed, superbubbles seem to be the most favourable sites of production of non thermal gamma-ray lines.

iii) SNIa: A direct observation of the gamma ray lines associated to $`{}_{}{}^{56}Co`$ from a SNIa (closer than 15 Mpc) would be a very happy event. It could serve to clarify the thorny physics of these objects, which serve, on the other hand, as distance indicators for cosmology.

## 3  The INTEGRAL mission

### 3.1 Overall presentation

Dedicated to the spectroscopy and imaging of celestial sources in the 15 keV to 10 MeV band, the ESA (European Space Agency) scientific mission INTEGRAL (International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory) will address the scientific objectives defined above through the simultaneous use of two main gamma-ray instruments, the high resolution spectrometer SPI and the fine imaging telescope IBIS, with concurrent source monitoring in the X-ray and visible bands. High resolution spectroscopy with fine imaging and accurate positioning of celestial sources over the entire energy range are mandatory to reach the scientific goals of the mission. Fine spectroscopy over the entire energy range will permit spectral features to be uniquely identified and line profiles to be determined for physical studies of the source region. Fine imaging capability within a large field of view will permit the accurate location and hence identification of the gamma-ray emitting objects with counterpart at other wavelengths. It will also enable extended regions to be distinguished from point sources and provide considerable serendipitous science. Explicit references on INTEGRAL science can be found in the proceedings of past INTEGRAL Workshops held in les Diablerets , Saint Malo , Taormina , and Alicante .

The INTEGRAL spacecraft (Figure 1) consists of a service module, commonly designed with the service module of the ESA XMM-Newton mission containing all spacecraft subsystem and a payload module containing the scientific instruments. INTEGRAL, with a payload mass of approximatly 2000 kg and a total launch mass of about 4000 kg will be launched in April 2002 by a Russian PROTON launcher into a highly eccentric 72-hour orbit (initial perigee height 10 000 km, initial apogee height 153 000 km). The particle induced background affects the performance of high-energy detectors, and scientific observations will therefore be carried out while the spacecraft is above an altitude of nominally 40 000 km, implying that 90$`\%`$ of the time spent on the orbit can be used for scientific observations. However, when taking into account several in-orbit activities (as e.g. slew and instrument calibration), the average observation efficiency becomes about 85 $`\%`$ per year. The spacecraft employs fixed solar arrays: this means, that the target pointing of the spacecraft (at any point in time) will remain outside an avoidance cone around the sun and anti-sun. This leads to a minimum angle between any celestial source and the sun/anti-sun of 50 degrees during the nominal mission life.

INTEGRAL will be an observatory-type mission with a nominal lifetime of 2 years, an extension up to 5 years is technically possible. Most of the observing time (65$`\%`$ during year 1, 70 $`\%`$ year 2 and 75 $`\%`$ after) will be awarded to the scientific community at large as the General Program. Typical observations will last up two weeks. Proposals following a standard AO process, will be selected on their scientific merit only by a single Time Allocation Committee. The first call for observation proposals, released in November 2000, has been closed on February 16, 2001. The remaining fraction of the observing time will be reserved, as guaranteed time, for the INTEGRAL Science Working Team for its contribution to the program. This fraction, the Core Program, will be devoted a Galactic plane survey, a deep exposure of the central radian of the Galaxy and pointed observations of selected regions (such as the Vela region) and targets of opportunity (TOO). In accordance with ESA’s policy on data rights, all scientific data will be made available to the scientific community at large one year after they have been released to the observer. For more information see the INTEGRAL World Wide Web pages.

The INTEGRAL Science Data Center (ISDC) located in Versoix, Switzerland, close to the Geneva Observatory, will be the center in which the INTEGRAL payload telemetry data will be processed to a level at which all users can pursue the scientific interpretation of the data. The data will be corrected for instrumental signature and some standard scientific processing and analysis will be performed. The ISDC is the place where the archive and derived products will be built and made accessible to the world wide astronomical community. The ISDC will routinely monitor the instrument science performance and conduct a quick-look science analysis. Most of the TOO showing up during the lifetime of INTEGRAL will be detected at the ISDC during the routine scrutiny of the data. Scientific data products obtained by standard analysis tools will be distributed to the observers and archived for later use by the science community.

### 3.2 The spectrometer SPI

One of the two main INTEGRAL instruments, the spectrometer SPI (Figure 1), has been designed to perform spectral analysis of localized and extended regions with performances at 1 MeV such as an energy resolution $`E/\mathrm{\Delta }E500`$ and a $`3\sigma `$ line sensitivity of $`\mathrm{5\; 10}^6`$ photons $`\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{cm}^2`$ ($`10^6`$ s exposure). The instrument features an array of 19 hexagonal high purity germanium detectors cooled by an active device to an operating temperature of 85 K. An hexagonal coded aperture mask is located 1.7 m above the detection plane in order to image large regions of the sky (fully coded field of view $``$ 16 degrees) with an angular resolution of 2 degrees. In order to reduce background radiation, the detector assembly is shielded by a veto system which extends around the bottom and side of the detector almost completely up to the coded mask. A plastic veto is provided below the mask to further reduce the 511 keV background. The spectrometer SPI is being developed under prime contractor responsibility of CNES (the French Space Agency) by a consortium of institutes in France (CESR Toulouse, CEA Saclay), Germany (MPE Garching), Italy (IFCTR Milano), Spain (U Valencia), Belgium (U Louvain), UK (U Birmingham), USA (UC San Diego, LBL Berkeley, NASA/GSFC Greenbelt). Principal Investigators are G. Vedrenne (CESR Toulouse), and V. Schoenfelder (MPE Garching).

## 4 Conclusion

With the launch in the near future of the INTEGRAL spacecraft, a golden age of nuclear astrophysics will open in Europe, at the point of convergence of nuclear physics and astrophysics. Time is ripe to join this effort, especially having in mind the fact that INTEGRAL is an observatory-type mission with most of the total observing time being awarded as the general program to the scientific community at large.


text:
# Color confinement and dual superconductivity of the vacuum. III.

## I Introduction

This paper is the third of a series, in which we study the dual superconductivity of the QCD vacuum  as a mechanism for confinement of color. In the first two papers  we have detected condensation of monopoles in the confining phase by means of a disorder parameter $`\mu `$, which is the vacuum expectation value of a magnetically charged operator, $`\mu `$. $`\mu `$ was determined by simulating the theory on a lattice: it is non zero in the confining phase, and tends to zero at the deconfining transition, above which it vanishes.

The connection of $`\mu `$ to confinement was proved by a quantitative determination of the critical indices and of the critical coupling. In , $`SU(2)`$ gauge theory was studied, while  was devoted to $`SU(3)`$ with similar results.

Magnetic charges in gauge theories are defined by a procedure known as Abelian projection : to every local field $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ belonging to the adjoint representation $`(N_c1)`$ $`U(1)`$ fields can be associated, and to each of them a conserved magnetic charge. In fact there exists a functional infinity of monopole species, $`N_c1`$ for each field $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$, which in principle can condense in the vacuum and confine the corresponding $`U(1)`$ electric charge by the dual Meissner effect. It is not known a priori if monopole condensations in different Abelian projections are independent phenomena.

The indication obtained in  by analysis of a number of different choices of $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ was that all of them show the same behaviour, so that they are equivalent to each other.

The possibility that in some way all the Abelian projections could be physically equivalent was first advocated in Ref. . In this paper we add strong evidence for that equivalence.

In order to explain what we do, let us first recall how magnetic charges are associated to any field $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ in the adjoint representation. We shall do it for $`SU(2)`$ to simplify notations; extension to $`SU(N)`$ only adds formal complications.

Let $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}(x)`$ be a field in the adjoint representation (color vector), and let $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}(x)`$ be its color orientation,

$`\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}(x){\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}(x)}{|\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}(x)|}}.`$ (1)
$`\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}(x)`$ is well defined, except at zeros of $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}(x)`$.

Define a gauge invariant field strength $`F_{\mu \nu }(x)`$

$`F_{\mu \nu }=\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}\stackrel{}{G}_{\mu \nu }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{g}}\left(D_\mu \widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}D_\nu \widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}\right)\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$ (2)
where $`\stackrel{}{G}_{\mu \nu }=_\mu \stackrel{}{A}_\nu _\nu \stackrel{}{A}_\mu +g\stackrel{}{A}_\mu \stackrel{}{A}_\nu `$ is the gauge field strength and $`D_\mu \widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}=(_\mu +g\stackrel{}{A}_\mu )\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$ is the covariant derivative of $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$.

Both terms in the right-hand side of eq. (2) are separately gauge invariant and color singlets: their combination is chosen in such a way that bilinear terms $`A_\mu A_\nu `$, $`A_\mu \mathrm{\Phi }`$ and $`A_\nu \mathrm{\Phi }`$ cancel. Actually, by simple algebra,

$`F_{\mu \nu }=\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}(_\mu \stackrel{}{A}_\nu _\nu \stackrel{}{A}_\mu ){\displaystyle \frac{1}{g}}\left(_\mu \widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}_\nu \widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}\right)\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}.`$ (3)
If we transform to a gauge in which $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}(x)=`$ constant in space-time, the last term cancels and

$`F_{\mu \nu }=_\mu (\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}\stackrel{}{A}_\nu )_\nu (\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}\stackrel{}{A}_\mu )`$ (4)
is an Abelian field strength. Such a gauge transformation is called an Abelian projection. It is in general a singular transformation which exposes monopoles at the sites where $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}(x)=0`$.

If $`F_{\mu \nu }^{}=\frac{1}{2}ϵ_{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }F^{\rho \sigma }`$ is the dual field to $`F_{\mu \nu }`$, one can define a magnetic current

$`j_\mu `$ $`=`$ $`^\nu F_{\mu \nu }^{};`$ (5)
$`j_\mu `$ is zero if Bianchi identities hold, but can be non zero in compact formulations in terms of parallel transport, like lattice formulation . In any case it follows from the antisymmetry of $`F_{\mu \nu }^{}`$ that

$`^\mu j_\mu =0.`$ (6)
In the dual superconductor view of color confinement the symmetry (6) is expected to be realized à la Wigner in the deconfined phase, and to be broken à la Higgs in the confined phase. An operator $`\mu `$ which carries magnetic charge can provide a disorder parameter to discriminate between the two possibilities. Such an operator was developed and tested in Refs .

What was found in  was that there is indeed dual superconductivity in a number of Abelian projections. As explained in detail in Sect. II, the full identification of the projected gauge requires to go to the gauge in which $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}(x)\stackrel{}{\lambda }`$ is diagonal in color indices ($`\stackrel{}{\lambda }`$ are the generators in the fundamental representation), with a fixed order of the eigenvalues.

One can diagonalize $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Phi }}(x)\stackrel{}{\lambda }`$ up to the ordering of the eigenvalues, choosing it randomly, and still define an operator $`\mu `$ which creates a magnetic charge in that Abelian projection. We show in this paper that the corresponding disorder parameter behaves exactly in the same way as the one with ordered eigenvalues.

We can even define a completely random Abelian projection, in which we do not diagonalize any operator $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$, but we take, e.g. for $`SU(2)`$, $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}=\sigma _3`$, the nominal 3 axis used in the simulation, and define the corresponding $`\mu `$. Again we find that $`\mu `$ defined in this way behaves exactly in the same way as those defined in Refs.  and scales with the same critical indices.

The above Abelian projections are kind of an average over a continuous infinity of Abelian projections, and the result demonstrates, beyond any doubt, the complete independence of dual superconductivity from the choice of the Abelian projection.

Our results are compatible with Ref. , where our disorder parameter in the random gauge was computed by Schroedinger functional techniques.

There has been in the literature in the last years the idea that monopoles defined by a particular Abelian projection (the maximal Abelian projection) are more relevant than others to confinement . We will discuss this issue in Sect. V, where we draw conclusions from our results.

In Sect. II the construction of the disorder parameter $`\mu `$ will be recalled, to define the Abelian Projection with Random Ordering (APRO) and the Random Abelian Projection (RAP). In Sect. III the numerical algorithms used will be discussed. The results will be described in Sect. IV. Sect. V will close the paper with conclusions.

## II Disorder parameter

In this Section we recall the definition of the disorder parameter for confinement.

Let $`𝒪`$ be an operator which transforms in the adjoint representation of the gauge group, i.e.

$`𝒪={\displaystyle \lambda ^a𝒪^a},`$ (7)
with $`\lambda ^a`$ the generators in the fundamental representation. The Abelian projection technique  prescribes to fix the gauge by a gauge transformation in such a way that

$`𝒪_{gf}`$ $`=`$ $`G^{}𝒪G=\text{diag}(o_1,\mathrm{},o_N)`$ (9)
$`\text{with}o_1<o_2<\mathrm{}<o_N.`$
After Abelian projection, there is still a $`U(1)^{N1}`$ gauge freedom left, since a transformation of the form

$`\mathrm{\Omega }=\text{diag}(e^{i\omega _1},\mathrm{},e^{i\omega _n}),{\displaystyle \omega _i}=0`$ (10)
does not change the gauge fixing condition, Eq. (9).

After Abelian projection, the gauge variables of $`SU(N)`$ are divided in two sets: the photons (the $`N1`$ neutral fields under the residual $`U(1)^{N1}`$) and the gluons (charged fields with respect to the residual symmetry). Abelian magnetic monopoles can arise at points where two eigenvalues of $`𝒪`$ are degenerate .

Condensation of Abelian monopoles defined by Abelian projection has been demonstrated numerically in Ref.  for $`SU(2)`$ and in Ref.  for $`SU(3)`$. This has been done by constructing an operator magnetically charged in a given Abelian projection and by studying the behaviour of the vacuum expectation value of that operator across the phase transition at finite temperature. In the language of Statistical Mechanics we call that operator a disorder operator and its vev a disorder parameter, the terminology being that the weak coupling (deconfined) phase is the ordered phase. The construction can be done in different Abelian projections: in Refs.  a number of Abelian projections have been studied, and for all of them it was found that indeed monopoles condense at low temperature, while the corresponding magnetic symmetry is implemented à la Wigner at high temperature. Moreover, the disorder parameter scales with the correct critical indices in the critical region and is independent of the choice of the Abelian projection. These results suggest that the observed behaviour of the disorder parameter is generally independent of the Abelian projection and of the Abelian operator chosen.

Let us review the construction of the disorder parameter. We introduce a time-independent external field

$`\mathrm{\Phi }_i(\stackrel{}{n},\stackrel{}{y})=Ge^{iTb_i(\stackrel{}{n}\widehat{i},\stackrel{}{y})}G^{},`$ (11)
where $`G`$ is the gauge transformation that diagonalizes the operator $`𝒪`$ according to Eq. (9), $`\stackrel{}{b}`$ is the discretised transverse field (i.e. $`\stackrel{}{}\stackrel{}{b}`$ = 0 on the continuum) generated at lattice spatial point $`\stackrel{}{n}`$ by a magnetic monopole sitting at $`\stackrel{}{y}`$ and $`T`$ is a generator of the Cartan subalgebra.

Let $`U_{\mu \nu }`$ be the Wilson plaquette defined in the usual notations as

$`U_{\mu \nu }(x)=U_\mu (x)U_\nu (x+\widehat{\mu })`$ $`(U_\mu (x+\widehat{\nu }))^{}(U_\nu (x))^{},`$ (12)
where $`x(\stackrel{}{n},t)`$. We introduce a shift $`U_{i0}(\stackrel{}{n},0)\stackrel{~}{U}_{i0}(\stackrel{}{n},0)`$ by inserting the external field $`\mathrm{\Phi }_i(\stackrel{}{n}+\widehat{i},\stackrel{}{y})`$ in the path ordered product at time zero, as follows:

$`\stackrel{~}{U}_{i0}(\stackrel{}{n},0)`$ $`=`$ $`U_i(\stackrel{}{n},0)\mathrm{\Phi }_i(\stackrel{}{n}+\widehat{i},\stackrel{}{y})U_0(\stackrel{}{n}+\widehat{i},0)`$ (14)
$`(U_i(\stackrel{}{n},1))^{}(U_0(\stackrel{}{n},0))^{}`$
and we define $`\stackrel{~}{U}_{\mu \nu }(x)U_{\mu \nu }(x)`$ elsewhere.

The Wilson action for $`SU(N)`$ gauge theory is

$`S=\beta {\displaystyle \underset{\mu \nu x}{}}\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2N}}\left(U_{\mu \nu }(x)+\left(U_{\mu \nu }(x)\right)^{}\right)\right),`$ (15)
where the sum extends over all the lattice points and directions.

By replacing in the previous equation the standard plaquette with the modified plaquette $`\stackrel{~}{U}_{\mu \nu }(i)`$ we obtain the “monopole” action

$`S_M(\stackrel{}{y},0)=\beta {\displaystyle \underset{\mu \nu x}{}}\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2N}}\left(\stackrel{~}{U}_{\mu \nu }(x)+(\stackrel{~}{U}_{\mu \nu }(x))^{}\right)\right).`$ (16)
The disorder parameter introduced in  is given by

$`\mu (\stackrel{}{y}_0,0)={\displaystyle \frac{\left(𝒟U\right)e^{S_M(\stackrel{}{y}_0,0)}}{\left(𝒟U\right)e^S}},`$ (17)
where the functional integral of $`e^S`$ is taken with periodic boundary conditions and the integral of $`e^{S_M}`$ with $`C^{}`$-periodic boundary conditions ,

$`U_i(\stackrel{}{n},t=N_t)=U_i^{}(\stackrel{}{n},t=0),`$ (18)
$`N_t`$ being the temporal extension of the lattice and $`U_i^{}`$ being the complex conjugated of $`U_i`$.

To study more in detail the dependence on the projecting operator, we will modify the definition of $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ as follows:

1. We choose a projecting operator and we diagonalise it but without fixing the order of the eigenvalues, or better with the order of the eigenvalues randomly chosen:

$`\mathrm{\Phi }_i(\stackrel{}{n},\stackrel{}{y})=GPe^{iTb_i(\stackrel{}{n}\widehat{i},\stackrel{}{y})}PG^{},`$ (19)
where $`P`$ is a random $`N\times N`$ permutation matrix. This corresponds to a sort of average of $`\mu `$ over the class of operators differing from $`𝒪`$ on each point by the order of the eigenvalues. We refer to this case as Abelian Projection with Random Ordering (APRO).
2. We do not perform the Abelian projection, i.e. we take

$`\mathrm{\Phi }_i(\stackrel{}{n},\stackrel{}{y})=e^{iTb_i(\stackrel{}{n}\widehat{i},\stackrel{}{y})}.`$ (20)
This is equivalent to a sort of average of $`\mu `$ over all the possible Abelian projections. We refer to this case as Random Abelian Projection (RAP).

As discussed in Ref. , a direct computation of $`\mu `$ with Monte Carlo techniques is problematic, because this quantity has large fluctuations, being the exponential of a sum over the physical volume. A more convenient quantity to study in numerical simulations is

$`\rho ={\displaystyle \frac{}{\beta }}\mathrm{log}\mu =S_SS_M_{S_M}.`$ (21)
$`\rho `$ is the difference of two average actions, the Wilson action and the modified action $`S_M`$ (the latter being averaged with the modified measure $`((𝒟U)e^{S_M})/((𝒟U)e^{S_M})`$). $`\rho `$ has smaller fluctuations and contains all relevant information. The value of $`\mu `$ is related to $`\rho `$ by the relationship

$`\mu =\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle _0^\beta }\rho (\beta ^{})\text{d}\beta ^{}\right).`$ (22)
## III Gauge fixing and simulation algorithms

We have determined the temperature dependence of $`\rho `$ for $`SU(2)`$ and $`SU(3)`$ pure Yang-Mills theories, for both definitions (19) and (20) of $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ on an asymmetric lattice $`N_s^3\times N_t`$ with $`N_tN_s`$.

For both definitions of $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$, the simulation of the Wilson term, $`S_S`$, has been performed on a lattice with periodic b.c., by using a standard mixture of heatbath and overrelaxed algorithms.

As for the APRO case, we have chosen the Polyakov line as the operator to identify the Abelian projection, following the definition in Eq. (31) of  and Eq. (19) of , with the only difference that at each spatial point the ordering of the eigenvalues is selected randomly among the possible different permutations $`n_p`$ ($`n_p=2`$ ($`6`$) for $`SU(2)`$ ($`SU(3)`$) pure gauge theory). This effectively corresponds to averaging over $`n_p^{N_s^3}`$ different definitions of the Abelian projection. The Abelian generator $`F^8`$ ($`F^8=\lambda ^8/2`$, with $`\lambda ^i`$ the Gell-Mann matrices), has been chosen to define the monopole field for the $`SU(3)`$ case. We use $`C^{}`$ boundary conditions in time to compute $`S_M_{S_M}`$ in Eq. (21). In this case, as explained in Ref. , it is not possible to use a standard heatbath or overrelaxed algorithm to simulate the modified action, since, e.g. in the case of Polyakov projection, the change of any temporal link induces a non linear change in the modified action. So we have performed simulations by using a mixed (heatbath + overrelaxed) algorithm for the update of spatial links, and a metropolis algorithm for the update of the temporal links.

In the case of the Random Abelian Projection instead, as it appears in Eq. (20), one does not need any gauge fixing to define the monopole field. As a consequence, the change of any link always induces a linear change in the modified action. Therefore we have used a standard (heatbath + overrelaxed) algorithm in this case. In the $`SU(3)`$ case, the Abelian generator $`F^8`$ has been used again to define the monopole field.

## IV Numerical results

The phase transition is known to be second order for $`SU(2)`$, weak first order for $`SU(3)`$ . As usual we shall speak of critical indices in both cases, meaning for $`SU(3)`$ effective critical indices at small values of $`(1T/T_c)`$, but not too small.

In Refs.  it was shown that the critical indices of the confinement transitions for $`SU(2)`$ and $`SU(3)`$ did not depend on the particular type of Abelian projection used to define the monopole condensation. Here we will show numerically that the critical exponents, and also the value of the critical coupling, are the same even for the Random Abelian Projection and the Abelian Projection with Random Ordering, both for $`SU(2)`$ and $`SU(3)`$

The critical behaviour of the disorder parameter $`\mu `$ is governed by an exponent $`\delta `$. For finite lattice sizes $`(N_s^3\times N_t)`$, finite size scaling states that

$$\mu =N_s^{\delta /\nu }F(\frac{\xi }{N_s},\frac{a}{\xi },\frac{N_t}{N_s}),$$
(23)
where $`a`$ and $`\xi `$ are respectively the lattice spacing and the correlation length of the system.

Near the critical point, for $`\beta <\beta _C`$,

$$\xi \left(\beta _C\beta \right)^\nu ,$$
(24)
where $`\nu `$ is the corresponding critical exponent. In the limit $`N_sN_t`$ and for $`a/\xi 1`$, i.e. sufficiently close to the critical point,

$$\mu =N_s^{\delta /\nu }\stackrel{~}{F}\left[N_s^{1/\nu }\left(\beta _C\beta \right)\right]$$
(25)
or equivalently

$$\frac{\rho }{N_s^{1/\nu }}=f\left[N_s^{1/\nu }\left(\beta _C\beta \right)\right].$$
(26)
The ratio $`\rho /N_s^{1/\nu }`$ is a universal function of the scaling variable

$$x=N_s^{1/\nu }\left(\beta _C\beta \right).$$
(27)
We will use the known values of $`\beta _C`$ and $`\nu `$ of $`SU(2)`$ and $`SU(3)`$ pure gauge theories to see that scaling holds with the present data. In order to obtain the critical exponent $`\delta `$, we use an expression equivalent to Eq. (25),

$$\mu =(\beta _c\beta )^\delta (x).$$
(28)
From here we get

$$\frac{\rho }{N_s^{1/\nu }}=\frac{\delta }{x}\frac{^{}(x)}{(x)}.$$
(29)
To obtain $`\delta `$ we need additional assumptions on the unknown scaling function $`(x)`$. We will see that fits of good quality are obtained with the simple parametrization

$$\frac{\rho }{N_s^{1/\nu }}=\frac{\delta }{x}C,$$
(30)
where $`C`$ is a constant term. This form is suggested by the fact that when $`x0`$, both $`(x)`$ and its derivative should go to a constant.

### A $`SU(2)`$ gauge theory

#### 1 The Random Abelian Projection

The quality of the scaling, Eq. (26), for $`SU(2)`$ in the RAP case can be seen in Fig. 1. Here we used the known values of $`\beta _C=2.2986`$ and $`\nu =0.63`$ . The curve in the figure corresponds to the best fit to Eq. (30). We get $`\delta =0.19(5)`$, with a $`\chi ^2/\mathrm{d}.\mathrm{o}.\mathrm{f}.1.5`$, in good agreement with the value obtained in the plaquette and Polyakov gauges in Ref. , $`\delta =0.20(8)`$.

#### 2 The Abelian Projection with Random Ordering

Results obtained in the APRO case are shown in Fig. 2, where again known values of $`\beta _C`$ and $`\nu `$ have been used. The curve in the figure corresponds to the best fit to Eq. (30), which gives $`\delta =0.20(6)`$, with a $`\chi ^2/\mathrm{d}.\mathrm{o}.\mathrm{f}.1.1`$. The agreement with the results obtained in the RAP case and in the plaquette and Polyakov gauges in Ref.  is very good.

### B $`SU(3)`$ gauge theory

The confinement transition in pure $`SU(3)`$ gauge theory is a first order transition . One therefore expects a pseudocritical behaviour, with $`\nu =1/3`$, that is, the inverse of the number of spatial dimensions. As it was remarked in Ref. , the scaling relation, Eq. (26), has to be modified in this case to include finite size violations to scaling,

$$\frac{\rho }{N_s^{1/\nu }}=f\left[N_s^{1/\nu }\left(\beta _C\beta \right)\right]+\mathrm{\Psi }(N_s),$$
(31)
where $`\mathrm{\Psi }(N_s)`$ parametrizes these effects. A simple assumption is

$$\mathrm{\Psi }(N_s)=\frac{a}{N_s^3},$$
(32)
valid up to $`𝒪(1/N_s^6)`$.

#### 1 The Random Abelian Projection

Fig. 3 shows the scaling behaviour expressed by Eq. (31), where we have taken for $`\mathrm{\Psi }(N_s)`$ the form (32). We used as an input the values $`\beta _C(N_t=4)=5.6925`$ and $`\nu =1/3`$ . The curve in the figure corresponds to a best fit to Eq. (30), modified by including the term $`\mathrm{\Psi }(N_s)`$, which gives the value $`\delta =0.50(3)`$, with a $`\chi ^2/\mathrm{d}.\mathrm{o}.\mathrm{f}.=3.2`$.

The quality of the fit improves considerably if one includes a second term in the expression for $`\mathrm{\Psi }(N_s)`$:

$$\mathrm{\Psi }(N_s)=\frac{a}{N_s^3}+\frac{b}{N_s^6}.$$
(33)
Then the value of $`\delta `$ remains the same, while $`\chi ^2/\mathrm{d}.\mathrm{o}.\mathrm{f}.=0.7`$. This demonstrates the importance of the finite size effects in $`SU(3)`$ gauge theory. The fit is shown in Fig. 4.

#### 2 The Abelian Projection with Random Ordering

In the APRO case we have obtained a good scaling behaviour as well, as shown in Fig. 5.

However in this case a fit to Eq. (31) with the function (32) has a very bad $`\chi ^2/\mathrm{d}.\mathrm{o}.\mathrm{f}.`$ (of order 16).

Also in this case the use of the expression (33) is essential: the best fit, shown in the figure, gives $`\delta =0.43(3)`$ with $`\chi ^2/\mathrm{d}.\mathrm{o}.\mathrm{f}.1.4`$. The value of $`\delta `$ is nearly compatible with the one obtained in the RAP case, $`\delta =0.50(3)`$. The result obtained in Ref.  is $`\delta =0.54(4)`$.

## V Conclusions

We have produced further and compelling evidence that monopole condensation is independent of the Abelian projection used to define the monopoles.

If the idea of duality is correct, the non-local excitations which are expected to be the fields of the dual description of QCD and weakly interacting in the confined phase, should have non zero magnetic charge in all the Abelian projections. This is a very important symmetry property, which can help in identifying them.

There has been a number of papers in the literature of the past years, claiming that the fundamental fields of the dual description are the monopoles defined by the maximal Abelian projection. The claim that monopoles defined by the maximal Abelian projection could be the dual excitations does not look in good shape after the quantitative attempts to construct the dual theory, which go beyond the initial empirical observation of Abelian dominance . If it were true maximal Abelian monopoles should be magnetically charged in all Abelian projections. This does not seem to be plausible, since one single Abelian projection does not confine the $`U(1)`$ neutral particles belonging to the adjoint representation, which would instead be confined in other Abelian projections.

Analysis of the $`Z_N`$ vortices could give some hints and investigation has been started in that direction . We think that the problem is still open.

## Acknowledgements

This work is partially supported by EU contract FMRX-CT97-0122 and by MURST. BL thanks PPARC for a postdoctoral fellowship.