Isospin invariance and the vacuum polarization energy of cosmic strings

2016/05/31 by H. Weigel, M. Quandt, Markus Quandt +2
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Classical mechanics #Cosmic string #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Gauge theory #Invariant (physics) #Isospin #Mathematical physics #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Particle physics #Physics #Polarization (electrochemistry) #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Regularization (linguistics) #Renormalization #String (physics) #Theoretical physics #Vacuum polarization #hep-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.94.045015

published as Phys. Rev. D 94, 045015 (2016) · matches journal version

arxiv created 2016/08/26 · openalex publication_date 2016/08/26 · arxiv updated 2016/08/31 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06

Abstract

We corroborate the previously applied spectral approach to compute the vacuum polarization energy of string configurations in models similar to the standard model of particle physics. The central observation underlying this corroboration is the existence of a particular global isospin transformation of the string configuration. Under this transformation the single particle energies of the quantum fluctuations are invariant, while the inevitable implementation of regularization and renormalization requires operations that are not invariant. We verify numerically that all such variances eventually cancel, and that the vacuum polarization energy obtained in the spectral approach is indeed gauge invariant.

Citations

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