Dimensional Reduction and Vacuum Structure of Quiver Gauge Theory

TL;DR

This paper explores the vacuum structure of quiver gauge theories derived from dimensional reduction of Yang-Mills-Dirac theories on manifolds involving CP(2), analyzing topological effects, symmetry breaking, and particle spectra with potential Standard Model analogies.

Contribution

It provides an explicit analysis of vacuum states, symmetry breaking, and fermionic zero modes in quiver gauge theories obtained via dimensional reduction on CP(2).

Findings

Vacuum states characterized by non-abelian flux conditions.

Spontaneous symmetry breaking patterns identified.

Massless chiral fermions and particle spectra analogous to the Standard Model.

Abstract

We describe the structure of the vacuum states of quiver gauge theories obtained via dimensional reduction over homogeneous spaces, in the explicit example of SU(3)-equivariant dimensional reduction of Yang-Mills-Dirac theory on manifolds of the form M x CP(2). We pay particular attention to the role of topology of background gauge fields on the internal coset spaces, in this case U(1) magnetic monopoles and SU(2) instantons on CP(2). The reduction of Yang-Mills theory induces a quiver gauge theory involving coupled Yang-Mills-Higgs systems on M with a Higgs potential leading to dynamical symmetry breaking. The criterion for a ground state of the Higgs potential can be written as the vanishing of a non-abelian Yang-Mills flux on the quiver diagram, regarded as a lattice with group elements attached to the links. The reduction of SU(3)-symmetric fermions yields Dirac fermions on M transforming under the low-energy gauge group with Yukawa couplings. The fermionic zero modes on CP(2) yield exactly massless chiral fermions on M, though there is a unique choice of spin(c) structure on CP(2) for which some of the zero modes can acquire masses through Yukawa interactions. We work out the spontaneous symmetry breaking patterns and determine the complete physical particle spectrum in a number of explicit examples, some of which possess quantum number assignments qualitatively analogous to the manner in which vector bosons, quarks and leptons acquire masses in the standard model.