Contatto di riferimento: Barbara Simoni
Partecipanti: Dr. James Edwards (University of Durham)
Abstract: Worldline techniques have proven a powerful approach to quantum field theory, offering new tools enjoying computational simplicity. Recent work applying this approach to field theories with a non-Abelian symmetry group has found it advantageous to represent the coupling of matter to the gauge field with auxiliary worldline variables. I will discuss how these "colour fields" can be extended so that scalar or spinor matter transforming in an arbitrary representation of the gauge group can easily be described in the worldline formalism.
This provides a means of generating the Wilson-loop interactions which encode the physical content of a field theory. The idea is to gauge a global symmetry that rotates between the families of colour fields and to introduce Chern-Simons terms which provide a projection onto the desired sector of the Hilbert space. I will demonstrate that this correctly picks out the Wilson-loop for an arbitrary matter multiplet whilst preserving the simplicity of the worldline physics.