Title
The Epstein-Glaser causal approach to the light-front QED<inf>4</inf>. I: Free theory
Date Issued
01 December 2014
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP)
Publisher(s)
Academic Press Inc.
Abstract
In this work we present the study of light-front field theories in the realm of the axiomatic theory. It is known that when one uses the light-cone gauge pathological poles (k+)-n arises, demanding a prescription to be employed in order to tame these ill-defined poles and to have the correct Feynman integrals due to the lack of Wick rotation in such theories. In order to shed a new light on this long standing problem we present here a discussion based on the use of rigorous mathematical machinery of the distributional theory combined with physical concepts, such as causality, to show how to deal with these singular propagators in a general fashion without making use of any prescription. The first step of our development will consist in showing how the analytic representation for propagators arises by requiring general physical properties within the framework of Wightman's formalism. From that we shall determine the equal-time (anti)commutation relations in the light-front form for the scalar and fermionic fields, as well as for the dynamical components of the electromagnetic field. In conclusion, we introduce the Epstein-Glaser causal method in order to have a mathematical rigorous description of the free propagators of the theory, allowing us to discuss a general treatment for propagators of the type (k+)-n. Afterwards, we show that at given conditions our results reproduce known prescriptions in the literature.
Start page
1034
End page
1061
Volume
351
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Física y Astronomía
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-84912127909
Source
Annals of Physics
ISSN of the container
00034916
Sponsor(s)
The authors would like to thank the anonymous referee for his/her comments and suggestions to improve this paper. R.B. thanks FAPESP for full support, Project No. 2011/20653-3, B.M.P. thanks CNPq and CAPES for partial support and D.E.S. thanks CNPq for full support.
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus