Engineering topics
Maas, Axel
Publications and source records attributed to Maas, Axel.
The spectrum of an SU(3) gauge theory with a fundamental Higgs field
In gauge theories, the physical, experimentally observable spectrum consists only of gauge-invariant states. This spectrum can be different from the elementary spectrum even at weak coupling and in the presence of the Brout–Englert–Higgs effect. We demonstrate this for an SU(3) gauge theory with a single fundamental Higgs, a toy theory for grand-unified theories. The manifestly gauge-invariant approach of lattice gauge theory is used to determine the spectrum in four different channels. It is found to be qualitatively different from the elementary one, and especially from the one predicted by standard perturbation theory. The result can be understood in terms of the Fröhlich–Morchio–Strocchi mechanism. In fact, we find that analytic methods based on this mechanism, a gauge-invariant extension of perturbation theory, correctly determine the spectrum, and give already at leading order a reasonably good quantitative description. Together with previous results this supports that this approach is the analytic method of choice for theories with a Brout–Englert–Higgs effect.
Dependence of the propagators on the sampling of Gribov copies inside the first Gribov region of Landau gauge
Beyond perturbation theory the number of gauge copies drastically increases due to the Gribov–Singer ambiguity. Any way of treating them defines, in principle, a new, non-perturbative gauge, and the gauge-dependent correlation functions can vary between them. Herein various such gauges will be constructed as completions of the Landau gauge inside the first Gribov region. The dependence of the propagators and the running coupling on these gauges will be studied for SU(2) Yang–Mills theory in two, three, and four dimensions using lattice gauge theory, and for a wide range of lattice parameters. While the gluon propagator is rather insensitive to the choice, the ghost propagator and the running coupling show a stronger dependence. It is also found that the influence of lattice artifacts is larger than in minimal Landau gauge.