Yang-Mills Theory as a Deformation of Topological Field Theory, Dimensional Reduction and Quark Confinement

TL;DR

This paper reformulates four-dimensional Yang-Mills theory as a deformation of a topological field theory, demonstrating quark confinement via a dimensional reduction to a two-dimensional sigma model and linking non-perturbative effects to instanton dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel topological field theory formulation of Yang-Mills, establishing a connection to lower-dimensional models and providing a new perspective on quark confinement.

Findings

Yang-Mills theory reformulated as a topological deformation

Dimensional reduction to a 2D sigma model with supersymmetry

Quark confinement explained via instanton-anti-instanton gas

Abstract

We propose a reformulation of Yang-Mills theory as a perturbative deformation of a novel topological (quantum) field theory. We prove that this reformulation of the four-dimensional QCD leads to quark confinement in the sense of area law of the Wilson loop. First, Yang-Mills theory with a non-Abelian gauge group G is reformulated as a deformation of a novel topological field theory. Next, a special class of topological field theories is defined by both BRST and anti-BRST exact action corresponding to the maximal Abelian gauge leaving the maximal torus group H of G invariant. Then we find the topological field theory ($D>2$) has a hidden supersymmetry for a choice of maximal Abelian gauge. As a result, the D-dimensional topological field theory is equivalent to the (D-2)-dimensional coset G/H non-linear sigma model in the sense of Parisi and Sourlas dimensional reduction. After maximal Abelian gauge fixing, the topological property of magnetic monopole and anti-monopole of four-dimensional Yang-Mills theory is translated into that of instanton and anti-instanton in two-dimensional equivalent model. It is shown that the linear static potential in four-dimensions follows from the instanton--anti-instanton gas in the equivalent two-dimensional non-linear sigma model obtained from the four-dimensional topological field theory by dimensional reduction, while the remaining Coulomb potential comes from the perturbative part in four-dimensional Yang-Mills theory. The dimensional reduction opens a path for applying various exact methods developed in two-dimensional quantum field theory to study the non-perturbative problem in low-energy physics of four-dimensional quantum field theories.