The non-Abelian gauge theory of matrix big bangs

TL;DR

This paper analyzes a time-dependent non-Abelian Yang-Mills theory derived from plane wave backgrounds, revealing that near the singularity, the dynamics are dominated by a diverging tachyonic mass term, with quartic interactions becoming negligible.

Contribution

It provides a detailed classical and quantum analysis of the gauge theory near singularities, highlighting the dominance of tachyonic mass terms over quartic interactions.

Findings

Quartic interactions are subleading near the singularity.

Evolution near t=0 is driven by diverging tachyonic mass.

Surprising features in the approach to flat spacetime.

Abstract

We study at the classical and quantum mechanical level the time-dependent Yang-Mills theory that one obtains via the generalisation of discrete light-cone quantisation to singular homogeneous plane waves. The non-Abelian nature of this theory is known to be important for physics near the singularity, at least as far as the number of degrees of freedom is concerned. We will show that the quartic interaction is always subleading as one approaches the singularity and that close enough to t=0 the evolution is driven by the diverging tachyonic mass term. The evolution towards asymptotically flat space-time also reveals some surprising features.