2006/12/26 by Scott Chapman, Chapman, Scott
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.hep-th/0612275
openalex publication_date 2006/12/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The ghost sector of SU(3) gauge field theory is studied, and new BRST-invariant states are presented that do not have any analog in other SU(N) field theories. The new states come in either ghost doublets or triplets, and they appear exclusively in SU(3) due to the fact that the non-Abelian part of the BRST charge has 3 ghost operators, while SU(3) has 3 pairs of off-diagonal gauge constraints. The states have finite, positive norms even though the triplet states do not have well-defined ghost numbers. It is speculated that this special nature of the ghost sector of SU(3) could play some role in QCD confinement.