Center vortices as sources of Abelian dominance in pure SU(2) Yang-Mills theory

We argue that in the infrared regime of continuum Yang-Mills theory, the possibility of a mass gap in the charged sector is closely associated with the center vortex sector. The analysis of the possible consequences of the ensembles of defects is done by showing that the description of center vortices and monopoles is naturally unified by means of a careful treatment of Cho decomposition. If on the one hand confinement is usually associated with monopole condensation in a compact abelian model, in this scenario, the previous decoupling of the off-diagonal degrees of freedom, for the abelian model dominate at large distances, can be understood as induced by a phase where center vortices become thick objects. Other important scenarios for correlated monopoles and center vortices, observed in lattice simulations, are also accomodated in our general formulation.Comment: 36 pages, improved version containing a more general discussio

Vortex Correlation Functions in Maxwell-Chern-Simons Models

Maxwell-Chern-Simons models in the presence of an instanton anti-instanton background are studied. The saddle-point configuration corresponds to the creation and annihilation of a vortex localized around the Dirac string needed to support the nontrivial background. This configuration is generalized to the case in which a nonlocal Maxwell term is allowed in order to fulfill the finite action requirement. Following 't Hooft procedure, we compute the vortex correlation functions and we study the possibility of obtaining spin 1/2 excitations. A possible connection with the bosonization of interacting three-dimensional massive fermionic systems is also discussed.Comment: 1+10 pages, LaTeX2

Massless Fermions and the Instanton Dipole Liquid in Compact QED_3

We study the consequences of including parity preserving matter for the effective dual theory corresponding to compact QED_3; in particular we focus on the effect of that contribution on the confinement-deconfinement properties of the system. To that end, we compare two recent proposals when massless fermions are included, both based on an effective anomalous dual model, but having global and local Z_2 symmetries, respectively. We present a detailed analysis to show that while for large mass fermions the global Z_2 symmetry is preferred, in the massless fermion case the local Z_2 scenario turns out to be the proper one. We present a detailed discussion about how the inclusion of massless fermions in compact QED_3 leads to deconfinement, and discuss the stability of the deconfined phase by introducing a description based on an instanton dipole liquid picture.Comment: 28 page

Dual description of U(1) charged fields in (2+1) dimensions

We show that the functional bosonization procedure can be generalized in such a way that, to any field theory with a conserved Abelian charge in (2+1) dimensions, there corresponds a dual Abelian gauge field theory. The properties of this mapping and of the dual theory are discussed in detail, presenting different explicit examples. In particular, the meaning and effect of the coefficient of the Chern-Simons term in the dual action is interpreted in terms of the spin and statistics connection.Comment: 25 page

Space of test functions for higher-order field theories

The fundamental space ζ is defined as the set of entire analytic functions [test functions φ(z)], which are rapidly decreasing on the real axis. The variable z corresponds to the complex energy plane. The conjugate or dual space ζ′ is the set of continuous linear functionals (distributions) on ζ. Among those distributions are the propagators, determined by the poles implied by the equations of motion and the contour of integration implied by the boundary conditions. All propagators can be represented as linear combinations of elementary (one pole) functionals. The algebra of convolution products is also determined. The Fourier transformed space ζ̃ contains test functions φ̃(x). These functions are extra-rapidly decreasing, so that the exponentially increasing solutions of higher-order equations are distributions on ζ̃. © 1994 American Institute of Physics.Fil:Oxman, L.E. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina

Universal transverse conductance between quantum hall regions and (2+1)D bosonization

Final version to appear in Nuclear Physics BConsiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - Biblioteca Centrale - P.le Aldo Moro, 7 Rome / CNR - Consiglio Nazionale delle RichercheSIGLEITItal