Vacuum structure of Yang-Mills theory as a function of $\theta$

TL;DR

This paper investigates the vacuum structure of SU(N) Yang-Mills theory as a function of the theta angle, revealing that only about half of the candidate vacua are locally stable and identifying their distinguishing features.

Contribution

It provides a systematic semiclassical analysis showing the number and stability of theta vacua, and introduces magnetic line operators as order parameters for different vacua.

Findings

Observables are N-branched functions of theta.

Approximately N/2 vacua are locally stable for each theta.

Spinodal points exist as a function of theta, possibly in the full theory.

Abstract

It is believed that in $SU(N)$ Yang-Mills theory observables are $N$-branched functions of the topological $\theta$ angle. This is supposed to be due to the existence of a set of locally-stable candidate vacua, which compete for global stability as a function of $\theta$. We study the number of $\theta$ vacua, their interpretation, and their stability properties using systematic semiclassical analysis in the context of adiabatic circle compactification on $\mathbb{R}^3 \times S^1$. We find that while observables are indeed N-branched functions of $\theta$, there are only $\approx N/2$ locally-stable candidate vacua for any given $\theta$. We point out that the different $\theta$ vacua are distinguished by the expectation values of certain magnetic line operators that carry non-zero GNO charge but zero 't Hooft charge. Finally, we show that in the regime of validity of our analysis YM theory has spinodal points as a function of $\theta$, and gather evidence for the conjecture that these spinodal points are present even in the $\mathbb{R}^4$ limit.