Transcript (Fan) Wang

Problems related to gauge
invariance, Lorentz covariance and
canonical quantization applied in
nucleon structure study
Fan Wang
CPNPC
(Joint Center for Particle Nuclear Physics and Cosmology, Nanjing Univ. and
Purple mountain observatory of CAS)
IMPCAS
(Institute of Modern Physics, Lanzhou, CAS)
[email protected]
Outline
1. Introduction
2. Gauge theory without gauge
interaction
3. Gauge invariant decomposition
4. Physical meaning of parton
distribution and its evolution
5. What is the key issue of nucleon
structure study
I.Introduction
• Nucleon is an SU(3) color gauge system, atom is an U(1) em
gauge system. The mass(energy)-momentum, spin, orbital
angular momentum distribution among the constituents are
fundamental problems in the internal structure study of atom
and nucleon.
• Our experience on the atomic, molecular, nuclear internal
structure study seems to show that these problems are trivial in
principle except the many-body complication.
• However, to take gauge invariance, canonical quantization,
Lorentz covariance for a gauge field system full into account,
this is not trivial in principle.
• 5 years ago we raised questions about the precise meaning of
momentum, spin and orbital angular momentum of quark, gluon
in nucleon structure. It seems that up to now there is no
consensus yet.
• Today I will discuss these questions further in the nucleon
structure study.
II. Gauge theory without gauge
interaction
• The gauge symmetry introduced by C.N. Yang
employing the minimum coupling to introduce pure
gauge and physical gauge interaction together.
• It is possible to have gauge invariant theory without
physical gauge interaction,

(i (   igA , pure )  m)  0
where

Fpure  0
• This kind formalism can be obtained through a
gauge transformation (GT),
 e
'

i ( x )
and introducing pure gauge interaction by setting,
A , pure    ( x)
(for simplicity use QED as example.) It is still a free
Dirac theory, but gauge invariant already. This is what
we mean pure gauge potential, it is solely due to GT.
In differential geometry this is an internal unitary
transformation related to internal basis changing.
III.Gauge invariant decomposition
• For a long time the Ji-decomposition seems to
be the unique gauge invariant possibility, which
does not have idea about the gluon spin and
orbital angular momentum. The three quark
momentum operators do not commute and so
can not consist of the complete set to describe
the three dimensional quark momentum
distribution.
• The next few pages show the different
decomposition of the angular momentum
operator of the QED case. QCD case has the
same form.





J QED Se  Le  S  L




J QED  Se  L'e  J '
In fact we obtained the same decomposition in the same time and
pointed out the unphysical features.
Commun. Theor. Phys. 27, 121 (1997)
Wakamatsu improved this by decomposing the total gluon angular
momentum J  into gauge invariant spin and orbital part.
'





J QED  Se  Le ' ' S ' ' L ' '
Consistent separation of nucleon
momentum and angular momentum
Standard construction of orbital angular momentum L   d 3 x x  P
Debate on the
gauge invariant decomposition
• Non-locality: Non-local operators are popular in gauge
field theory. The A-B effect is a non-local effect. All of
the parton distribution operators are non-local, only in
light-cone gauge becomes local. The new one is local
in Coulomb gauge
• Canonical commutation relation:
Renormalization ruins the canonical commutation
relation. However there is no way to avoid the
canonical quantization rule.
hep-ph:0807.3083,0812.4336,0911.0248,1205.6983
Lorentz covariance
• The Lorentz transformation (LT) property of 4

coordinate x , momentum p , and field tensor F 
are fixed by measurement. They are transformed by
the usual homogeneous LT.

• The LT property of 4-vector potential A is gauge
dependent, because there is gauge degree of
freedom:
Lorentz gauge, usually they are chosen to transform
with homogeneous LT, but it can also be chosen to
 'with inhomogeneous
 
 ' i.e.,
transform
LT,
A ( x' )   A ( x)   ( x' )
Because there are
residual gauge degree of freedom.
• Coulomb gauge, vector potential must be transformed
by the inhomogeneous LT to make the transformed
potential still satisfy the Coulomb gauge condition, i.e,.
'



'
A ( x' )   A ( x)   ( x' ), ~~   A ( x' )  0
'
'
because homogeneous LT mixing the unphysical
components to the vector potential and one must do
additional gauge transformation to eliminate the
unphysical components.
• Light-cone gauge vector potential must also be
transformed by inhomogeneous LT to make the
A '  0
in the new Lorentz frame. Only for limited boosting
along the infinite momentum direction light-cone
gauge fixing can be preserved automatically!
• The Lorentz frame independence of a
theory must be independent of the gauge
fixing, no matter the Lorentz gauge,
Coulomb gauge or light-cone gauge is
used. All of them must be Lorentz
invariant.
• The Lorentz transformation form of the
gauge potentials are gauge dependent
accordingly!
A systematic analysis had been given by C. Lorce in
arXiv:1205.6483[hep-ph],PRD87(2013)034031.
• It is impossible to decompose the total energy,
the 0th momentum, of an interacting gauge
system into the quark (electron) and gluon
(photon) part to keep them as the 0th
momentum of the individual part, i.e., to
transform as the 0th component of a 4momentum.
Uniqueness of the decomposition
and the gauge invariant extension
Gauge invariance is the necessary condition for the
measurabilily but not sufficient one. To discover the gauge
invariant one is different from the gauge invariant extension.
Different gauge invariant extensions are not all physical and
usually result physically different ones.
QED case this physical condition is unique,
QCD case the generalization of this condition is more complicated
and under hot debate. We believe the physical one is unique and
our physical condition is a generalization of Coulomb gauge ,
i.e., only two helicity gluon components are physical.
• To obtain the gauge invariant momentum,
orbital angular momentum, gluon spin, etc., is
to discover the gauge invariant one through
the decomposition of gauge potential.
• The gauge invariant extension through a gauge
link or other methods usually mixes the gluon
and quark part and change the physical
meaning of the operator.
Four momentum operators
only p physis physical one
p cano
p kine
1
 mr  q A  
i
1
 p  q A  m r  D
i


plc  p  qA
p phys  mr  q A  q A pure  mr  q A phys

  q A pure
i
• The kinematic quark momentum p  g A
suggested by X.D. Ji and M. Wakamatsu is not
the right quantum mechanical momentum
Operator: three components do not commute and
so cannot consist of a complete set to describe
the 3-d quark momentum distribution, which can
not be reduced to the canonical one in any
gauge.
There is no solution of its eigen-value equation.
They are still a mixing of quark and gluon
momentum and has never been measured except
in classic physics !
Partial gauge invariant and power
counting for electron momentum
• X. Ji developed the socalled power counting to relate
the gauge invariant kinematical momentum to the
canonical one, to assume the vector potential as a
perturbative correction.
• Gauge invariance is an exact symmetry, there is only
gauge invariance or non-invariance. Partial gauge
invariance is nonsense!
• The only gauge invariant physical one is what we
defined, the physical momentum and used in nonrelativistic quantum mechanics in fact.
• The light-cone momentum


plc  p  qA
is the infinite momentum frame version of the
physical momentum,
p phys  p  qApure
• Because various arguments show consistently
that the A  only includes the longitudinal
component A// at least in the infinite
momentum frame. And the kinematical
momentum cannot be transformed to the lightcone one through the gauge transformation.
Centenary question: Spin and orbital
angular momentum of massless photon
and gluon
• For a long time it is believed that one can not
decompose the total angular momentum of a
massless particle, the photon and gluon, into
spin and orbital ones.
• Now there seems to be a consensus that this
conclusion should be modified as: there are no
local gauge invariant spin and orbital angular
operators but there are nonlocal ones.
• The measured photon spin should be
E  A phys
• The measured gluon spin is the matrix elements of the
above gluon spin operator boosted to the infinite
momentum frame.
• The complicating of the boosting is not due to the use
of physical component

phys
A
but due to the spin operator itself . There is the wellknown Wigner rotation.
IV.Physical meaning of parton
distribution and its evolution
• Jaffe and Bashinsky (arXiv:hep-ph/9804397,
NPB536(1999)303) studied the physical meaning of
the parton distribution. They conclude that the parton
momemtum distribution is a distribution on the eigenvalue of the light-cone momentum.



p  i(  igA )
• Only those observables, the corresponding operators
commute with the light-cone momentum, have
physical meaningful parton distributions.
• If we insist on this requirement, the 3-D parton
momentum distribution and the light-cone quark orbital
angular momentum distribution can not be the
kinematical ones
• In the naïve parton model the parton distribution f(x) is
a distribution of parton canonical momentum

x p /P

distribution. Taking into account of the gluon
interaction, under the collinear approximation, the
parton distribution is the light-cone momentum


p  gA
distribution.
• The further gauge transformation can only introduces
the pure gauge gluon field A
into the parton
pure
momentum. The transverse (physical) components

Aphys will never be involved in the measured parton
momentum.
Physical momentum satisfy the canonical
commutation relations, reduced to the canonical
momentum in Coulomb gauge, and the measured
quark momentum distribution should be the
matrix elements of the physical momentum
boosting to infinite momentum frame.
The measured electron momentum in atomic
and molecular structure should be the matrix
elements of the physical momentum in the lab
frame not the socalled power counting ones.
Quark orbital angular momentum
• The quark kinematical orbital angular momentum
Lq 
3

d
xx


q ( p  gA) q

calculated in LQCD and “measured” in DVCS is not the
real orbital angular momentum used in quantum
mechanics. It does not satisfy the Angular Momentum
Algebra,
L  L  iL
and the gluon contribution is ENTANGLED in it.
•
E. Leader suggested to use the gauge variant
canonical momentum and angular momentum
operators as the physical one and tried to prove that
the matrix elements of physical states of gauge
dependent operator are gauge invariant.
• His argument is based on F. Strocchi and A.S.
Wightman’s theory and this theory is limited to the
extended Lorentz gauge and so at most only true for
very limited gauge transformations.
• Our gauge invariant momentum and angular
momentum operator reduce to the canonical one in
physical gauge, i.e., they are generators for physical
field.
arXiv:1203.1288[hep-ph]
Evolution of the parton distribution
• Most of the evolutions are based on the free parton
picture and perturbative QCD.
• The measured parton distribution is always a mixing of
non-perturbative and perturbative one.
• The first moment of polarized structure function
1 (Q 2 )   g1 ( x, Q 2 ) dx
2
shows dramatical changes in the low Q region,
2
the simple evolution can not describe the low Q
behavior.
V.What is the key issue of the
nucleon structure study?
• Are all of those problems popular in the
present nucleon structure study really
important ones and will lead to new
understanding of nucleon internal structure ,
especially to new physics?
• How does the parton picture discovred in the
infinite momentum frame relate to the picture
discovered in hadron spectroscopy, which is
complicated but should not be left aside.
Thanks
Symmetric or asymmetric
energy-momentum(E-M) tensor
• The E-M tensor of the interacting quark-gluon system
is the starting point to study the momentum, spin and
orbital angular momentum distribution among the
quark, gluon constituents.
• The Lagrangian of an interacting quark-gluon field
system is
a
1

1  a a

a
L(x)   (i (   igA )  m)  h.c.  F F
2
2
4
• From the interacting quark-gluon Lagrangian,
follow the standard Noether recipe one can
obtain the E-M tensor of this system,

Tas
i
 
 a  a

      h.c.  F  A  g L(x)
2
• This E-M tensor is neither symmetric nor gauge
invariant.
• One can follow the Belinfante recipe to get the
symmetric one or add a surface term to make it
gauge invariant,

Tsy
i
  (  D    D  )  h.c.  F  a Fa  g  L(X),
4
D      igAa
a
2
.
• It is the popular idea that one has the
freedom to make choice of the form of the
E-M tensor, because to add a surface
term will not change the conservation law
satisfied by the E-M tensor.
• The symmetric and gauge invariant one is
prefered because the Einstain gravitation
equation needs symmetric E-M tensor of
matter fields.
• In fact the E-M tensor density of em-field
is measurable and there are already
experimental hints to refute the symmetric
one .
• For symmetric em E-M tensor, there should be
no difference of the diffraction pattern for an
orbital or spin polarized light beam if the total
J z  lz ~ or ~ sz  1
• For asymmetric em E-M tensor, there should be
difference of the diffraction pattern between
orbital and spin polarized beams, because only
for orbital polarized beam there is momentum
density circular flow in the transverse plane.
A detailed analysis had been given in
arXiv:1211.4407[physics.class-ph]
Optical evidence
Spin is different from orbital angular
momentum
• In 1920’s one already knew that the fundamental spin can not
be related to the orbital motion. So to use the symmetric E-M
tensor to express the angular momentum operator as
physically is misleading even though mathematically correct. It
also leads to the wrong idea that the Poynting vector is not only
the energy flow but also the momentum density flow of em field.
The Belinfante derivation of the symmetric E-M tensor and in
turn the derived momentum and angular momentum density
operators physically is misleading too.
Spin half electron field needs
asymmetric energy-momentum tensor
• Symmetric E-M tensor for a spin half electron field will lead to
contradiction between angular momentum and magnetic
momentum measurement. Suppose we have a spin polarized
electron beam moving along the z direction with momentum
density flow K ,
1
 ( x K ) z dV   J z dV  N 2
K
j
  n,
E e
E
E
 ( x  K ) z dV  e  ( x  j ) z dV  e  2 z dV  N 1
• For symmetric E-M tensor, the momentum density flow is the
same as the energy density flow. For spin s=1/2 electron this
will lead to a contradiction. The energy flow and momentum
density flow should be different.
A detaild analysis had been given in arXiv:1211.2360[gr-qc].
To meet the requirement of a gauge
invariant but asymmetric E-M tensor we
derived the following one based on the
decomposition of gauge potential.
Hope experimental colleagues to check
further which one is the correct one.

cw
T
i  
  phys

   D pure  h.c.  F  A  g L(x)
2
Z.T. Liang’s explanation of parton
distribution