Published March 15, 1972 | Version v1
Journal article

Massive vector field and electromagnetic field in the Landau gauge

Creators

Description

It is shown that by introducing an auxiliary scalar field having negative norm, one can formulate a consistent, manifestly covariant, and manifestly renormalizable theory of a neutral vector field. The $S$ matrix is unitary if the vector field couples with a conserved current. An important feature of this theory is that it smoothly tends to quantum electrodynamics in the Landau gauge when the bare mass of the vector field goes to zero. On the basis of this fact, one resolves the drawback of Johnson's proof of the statement that the physical mass of the vector field must vanish when its bare mass vanishes. Furthermore, it is explicitly demonstrated how the vacuum expectation value of the commutator of Heisenberg operators behaves as the mass tends to zero. Finally, an extension of this theory to the massive Yang-Mills field is briefly discussed.

Additional details

Identifiers

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physical Review D
Journal Volume
5
Journal Issue
6
Series
Phys. Rev., D.
Journal Page Range
1324-1330
ISSN
0556-2821

INIS

Country of Publication
United States
Country of Input or Organization
United States
INIS RN
3033238
Subject category
S72: PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS;
Descriptors DEI
ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS; EXPECTATION VALUE; QUANTUM FIELD THEORY; RENORMALIZATION; S MATRIX; VECTOR FIELDS; YANG-MILLS THEORY
Descriptors DEC
FIELD THEORIES; MATRICES

Optional Information

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