2016/01/18 by Timothy Nguyen, Nguyen, Timothy
Physics and Astronomy · #53Z05 #81T13 #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Differential Geometry (math.DG) #FOS: Mathematics #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Mathematical Physics (math-ph) #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1601.04726
openalex publication_date 2016/01/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We prove that Wilson loop expectation values for arbitrary simple closed contours obey an area law up to second order in perturbative two-dimensional Yang-Mills theory. Our analysis occurs within a general family of axial-like gauges, which include and interpolate between holomorphic gauge and the Wu-Mandelstam-Liebrandt light cone gauge. Our methods make use of the homotopy invariance properties of iterated integrals of closed one-forms, which allows us to evaluate the nontrivial integrals occurring at second order. We close with a discussion on complex gauge-fixing and deformation of integration cycles for holomorphic path integrals to shed light on some of the quantum field-theoretic underpinnings of our results.