Sum Rules for the Dirac Spectrum of the Schwinger Model

TL;DR

This paper derives sum rules for the Dirac spectrum in the Schwinger model, linking spectral properties to topological charge and chiral symmetry breaking, with implications for related theories like QCD and condensed matter systems.

Contribution

It provides a microscopic derivation of sum rules for the Dirac spectrum in the Schwinger model, including topological charge effects and connections to the bosonized theory.

Findings

Sum rules match Leutwyler-Smilga predictions for the Schwinger model.

Spectral shift by topological charge is consistent with chiral condensate formation.

Connections established between Dirac spectrum and random Dirac fermion theories.

Abstract

The inverse eigenvalues of the Dirac operator in the Schwinger model satisfy the same Leutwyler-Smilga sum rules as in the case of QCD with one flavor. In this paper we give a microscopic derivation of these sum rules in the sector of arbitrary topological charge. We show that the sum rules can be obtained from the clustering property of the scalar correlation functions. This argument also holds for other theories with a mass gap and broken chiral symmetry such as QCD with one flavor. For QCD with several flavors a modified clustering property is derived from the low energy chiral Lagrangian. We also obtain sum rules for a fixed external gauge field and show their relation with the bosonized version of the Schwinger model. In the sector of topological charge $\nu$ the sum rules are consistent with a shift of the Dirac spectrum away from zero by $\nu/2$ average level spacings. This shift is also required to obtain a nonzero chiral condensate in the massless limit. Finally, we discuss the Dirac spectrum for a closely related two-dimensional theory for which the gauge field action is quadratic in the the gauge fields. This theory of so called random Dirac fermions has been discussed extensively in the context of the quantum Hall effect and d-wave super-conductors.