1999/08/28 by Prem P. Srivastava, Srivastava, Prem P.
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Nuclear Theory (nucl-th) #Photonic and Optical Devices #hep-ph #hep-th #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.hep-ph/9908492
50 pages, plain Latex, Invited article for "Saga of Field Theory: From Points to Strings", Eds., A.N. Mitra et al., Indian National Science Academy-INSA, India
arxiv created 1999/08/28 · openalex publication_date 1999/08/28 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Some basic topics in the light-front (LF) quantization of relativistic field theory are reviewed. It is argued that the LF quantization is equally appropriate as the conventional one and that they lead, assuming the micro- causality principle, to the same physical content. This is confirmed in the studies on the LF of the spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB), of the degenerate vacua in Schwinger model (SM) and Chiral SM (CSM), of the chiral boson theory, and of the QCD in covariant gauges among others. The discussion on the LF is more economical and more transparent. In the context of the Dyson-Wick pertur- bation theory the relevant popagators in the front form theory are causal. The Wick rotation can then be performed to employ the Euclidean space integrals in momentum space. The lack of manifest covariance becomes tractable, and still more so if we employ, as discussed in the text, the Fourier transform of the fermionic field based on a special construction of the LF spinor. The fact that the hyperplanes xpm=0 constitute characteristic surfaces of the hyper- bolic partial differential equation is found irrelevant in the quantized theory.