Non-triviality of the vacuum in light-front quantization; and implications for correctly formulating light-front quantization

Name: Non-triviality of the vacuum in light-front quantization; and implications for correctly formulating light-front quantization
Start: 2021-01-06T13:30:00+00:00
End: 2021-01-06T15:00:00+00:00
Location: No location set

by John C. Collins (Penn State U.)

Wednesday Jan 6, 2021, 1:30 PM → 3:00 PM GMT

Description

It is often stated that the vacuum is trivial when light-front is used, in contrast to equal-time quantization. In fact this is not the case, as has been known since 1969. I give an elementary review of why this happens, and locate an easy-to-miss but elementary mathematical error in proofs of vacuum triviality.

In the light of this, a careful re-examination and reformulation of the mathematics of light-front quantization is needed, and I lay out a program to do this. The program builds on some already-known mathematical complications that are easily overlooked.

(Some of the material in this seminar is in arXiv:1801.03960.)

Webinar at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81572103194?pwd=eE1QVWZFc1hWbWszZ2N0RW1iWHFBZz09