1993/04/19 by M. Asorey, S. Carlip, F. Falceto · 12 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Boson #Degeneracy (biology) #Eigenvalues and eigenvectors #Gauge boson #Gauge theory #Hamiltonian (control theory) #Hamiltonian lattice gauge theory #Hilbert space #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Topological Materials and Phenomena #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/0370-2693(93)90985-q
published in Physics Letters B 312(4), 477-485 (Elsevier BV) · 11 pages
arxiv created 1993/04/19 · openalex publication_date 1993/08/01 · arxiv updated 2010/04/28 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
In an abelian topologically massive gauge theory, any eigenstate of the Hamiltonian can be decomposed into a factor describing massive propagating gauge bosons and a Chern-Simons wave function describing a set of nonpropagating ``topological'' excitations. The energy depends only on the propagating modes, and energy eigenstates thus occur with a degeneracy that can be parametrized by the Hilbert space of the pure Chern-Simons theory. We show that for a \em nonabelian topologically massive gauge theory, this degeneracy is lifted: although the Gauss law constraint can be solved with a similar factorization, the Hamiltonian couples the propagating and nonpropagating (topological) modes.