Register

Adv. Query

Q&A (4871)

Reviews (203)

Open problems (47)
Meta (439)

Site Statistics

205 submissions , 163 unreviewed
5,082 questions , 2,232 unanswered
5,353 answers , 22,789 comments
1,470 users with positive rep
820 active unimported users
More ...

Wilson/Polyakov loops in Weinberg's QFT books

1676 views

I wanted to know if the discussion on Wilson loops and Polyakov loops (and their relationship to confinement and asymptotic freedom) is present in the 3 volumes of Weinberg's QFT books but in some other name or heading.

At least I couldn't naively find these topics in that book.

I was hoping to see some detailed discussion about these non-local physical observables and also may be some model calculations and evaluations of them in some gauge theories. In Eduardo Fradkin's lecture notes there exists an evaluation of the Wilson loop in free Maxwell's theory and that too in a certain limit of large time and large separation and thats the only example of such a calculation that I have seen.

{Aside: I would be grateful if people can also point to other pedagogic/classic/path-breaking papers/references in this topic of Wilson loops. To start off these are four papers that I came across while searching along this direction - arXiv:hep-th/0003055, arXiv:hep-th/9911088, arXiv:hep-ph/0905.2317, arXiv:hep-th/9803002}

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

asked Dec 27, 2011 in Theoretical Physics by Anirbit (585 points) [ no revision ]
retagged Apr 19, 2014 by dimension10

Your comment on this question:

To answer, leave an answer instead. Comments are usually for non-answers.
To mask links under text, please type your text, highlight it, and click the "link" button. You can then enter your link URL.
To alert a user, please use the "@" command and remove spaces from the username, example, the user "John Doe" should be pinged as "@JohnDoe", while the user "Johndoe" should be pinged as "@Johndoe". The post author is always automatically pinged (unless you are the post author).
Please consult the FAQ for as to how to format your post.

Live preview (may slow down editor) Preview

Your name to display (optional):

Email me at this address if a comment is added after mine:

Privacy: Your email address will only be used for sending these notifications.

Anti-spam verification:

[captcha placeholder]

Please complete the anti-spam verification

2 Answers

The original papers by Geraldus 't Hooft himself are quite readable.

Whenever I open these papers, I'm always awestruck.

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

answered Dec 28, 2011 by Yuji (1,395 points) [ no revision ]

Thanks a lot for the references! You have any insights about whether Weinberg has somehow garbed this topic of Wilson/Polyakov loops in some other form/terminology? It would be weird if this classic topic in gauge theory doesn't feature in the classic book on QFT!

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

commented Dec 28, 2011 by Anirbit (585 points) [ no revision ]

I don't know if it's in it or not (look for "area law" or "confinement" in it). Note that you and I may think this topic as classic, but I guess it can be too modern a topic for him. Anyway, just stop regarding his book as sacred.

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

commented Dec 28, 2011 by Yuji (1,395 points) [ no revision ]

Your comment on this answer:

To answer, leave an answer instead. Comments are usually for non-answers.
To mask links under text, please type your text, highlight it, and click the "link" button. You can then enter your link URL.
To alert a user, please use the "@" command and remove spaces from the username, example, the user "John Doe" should be pinged as "@JohnDoe", while the user "Johndoe" should be pinged as "@Johndoe". The post author is always automatically pinged (unless you are the post author).
Please consult the FAQ for as to how to format your post.

Live preview (may slow down editor) Preview

Your name to display (optional):

Email me at this address if a comment is added after mine:

Privacy: Your email address will only be used for sending these notifications.

Anti-spam verification:

[captcha placeholder]

Please complete the anti-spam verification

The lecture 7 and 10 by Witten in the following book contain a good review on this issue.

Quantum fields and strings: a course for mathematicians, Volume 2

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

answered Jan 1, 2012 by Satoshi Nawata (345 points) [ no revision ]

Your comment on this answer:

To answer, leave an answer instead. Comments are usually for non-answers.
To mask links under text, please type your text, highlight it, and click the "link" button. You can then enter your link URL.
To alert a user, please use the "@" command and remove spaces from the username, example, the user "John Doe" should be pinged as "@JohnDoe", while the user "Johndoe" should be pinged as "@Johndoe". The post author is always automatically pinged (unless you are the post author).
Please consult the FAQ for as to how to format your post.

Live preview (may slow down editor) Preview

Your name to display (optional):

Email me at this address if a comment is added after mine:

Privacy: Your email address will only be used for sending these notifications.

Anti-spam verification:

[captcha placeholder]

Please complete the anti-spam verification

Your answer

Please use answers only to (at least partly) answer questions. To comment, discuss, or ask for clarification, leave a comment instead.
To mask links under text, please type your text, highlight it, and click the "link" button. You can then enter your link URL.
Please consult the FAQ for as to how to format your post.
This is the answer box; if you want to write a comment instead, please use the 'add comment' button.

Live preview (may slow down editor) Preview

Your name to display (optional):

Email me at this address if my answer is selected or commented on:

Privacy: Your email address will only be used for sending these notifications.

Anti-spam verification:

If you are a human please identify the position of the character covered by the symbol $\varnothing$ in the following word:
p$\varnothing$ysicsOverflow
Then drag the red bullet below over the corresponding character of our banner. When you drop it there, the bullet changes to green (on slow internet connections after a few seconds).

Please complete the anti-spam verification

user contributions licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 with attribution required

Your rights

...