Canonical Quantization of the Self-Dual Model coupled to Fermions

TL;DR

This paper develops a quantum field theory for the self-dual model coupled to fermions, analyzing its invariance, interaction terms, and non-renormalizability, and compares it to the Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory.

Contribution

It formulates the interaction picture dynamics of the self-dual field coupled to fermions using Dirac brackets, revealing non-renormalizability and differences from Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory.

Findings

The free self-dual model is relativistically invariant with excitations identical to Maxwell-Chern-Simons.

Interaction introduces non-renormalizable, local in space and time, terms.

The coupled theory is non-renormalizable and differs from the Maxwell-Chern-Simons model.

Abstract

This paper is dedicated to formulate the interaction picture dynamics of the self-dual field minimally coupled to fermions. To make this possible, we start by quantizing the free self-dual model by means of the Dirac bracket quantization procedure. We obtain, as result, that the free self-dual model is a relativistically invariant quantum field theory whose excitations are identical to the physical (gauge invariant) excitations of the free Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory. The model describing the interaction of the self-dual field minimally coupled to fermions is also quantized through the Dirac bracket quantization procedure. One of the self-dual field components is found not to commute, at equal times, with the fermionic fields. Hence, the formulation of the interaction picture dynamics is only possible after the elimination of the just mentioned component. This procedure brings, in turns, two new interaction terms, which are local in space and time while non-renormalizable by power counting. Relativistic invariance is tested in connection with the elastic fermion-fermion scattering amplitude. We prove that all the non-covariant pieces in the interaction Hamiltonian are equivalent to the covariant minimal interaction of the self-dual field with the fermions. The high energy behavior of the self-dual field propagator corroborates that the coupled theory is non-renormalizable. Certainly, the self-dual field minimally coupled to fermions bears no resemblance with the renormalizable model defined by the Maxwell-Chern-Simons field minimally coupled to fermions.