Positive mass gap of quantum Yang-Mills Fields

TL;DR

This paper constructs a rigorous 4D quantum Yang-Mills theory satisfying Wightman's axioms, demonstrating a positive mass gap and its implications for the clustering property.

Contribution

It introduces a novel construction of a quantum Yang-Mills field with a positive mass gap, using a new Hilbert space structure and path integral quantization.

Findings

Existence of a positive mass gap in the constructed theory

The mass gap is strictly positive across all irreducible representations

The positive mass gap implies the Clustering Theorem

Abstract

We construct a 4-dimensional quantum field theory on a Hilbert space, dependent on a simple Lie Algebra of a compact Lie group, that satisfies Wightman's axioms. This Hilbert space can be written as a countable sum of non-separable Hilbert spaces, each indexed by a non-trivial, inequivalent irreducible representation of the Lie Algebra. In each component Hilbert space, a state is given by a triple, a space-like rectangular surface $S$ in $\mathbb{R}^4$, a measurable section of the Lie Algebra bundle over this surface $S$, represented irreducibly as a matrix, and a Minkowski frame. The inner product is associated with the area of the surface $S$. In our previous work, we constructed a Yang-Mills measure for a compact semi-simple gauge group. We will use a Yang-Mills path integral to quantize the momentum and energy in this theory. During the quantization process, renormalization techniques and asymptotic freedom will be used. Each component Hilbert space is the eigenspace for the momentum operator and Hamiltonian, and the corresponding Hamiltonian eigenvalue is given by the quadratic Casimir operator. The eigenvalue of the corresponding momentum operator will be shown to be strictly less than the eigenvalue of the Hamiltonian, hence showing the existence of a positive mass gap in each component Hilbert space. We will further show that the infimum of the set containing positive mass gaps, each indexed by an irreducible representation, is strictly positive. In the last section, we will show how the positive mass gap will imply the Clustering Theorem.