Entanglement of Fock-space expansion and covariance in light-front Hamiltonian dynamics

Schoonderwoerd, N. C. J.; Bakker, B. L. G.; Karmanov, V. A.

Entanglement of Fock-space expansion and covariance in light-front Hamiltonian dynamics

Authors

Schoonderwoerd, N. C. J.

Bakker, B. L. G.

Karmanov, V. A.

Description

We investigate in a model with scalar ``nucleons'' and mesons the contributions of higher Fock states that are neglected in the ladder approximation of the Lippmann-Schwinger equation. This leads to a breaking of covariance, both in light-front and in instant-form Hamiltonian dynamics. The lowest Fock sector neglected has two mesons in the intermediate state and corresponds to the stretched box. First we show in a simplified example that the contributions of higher Fock states are much smaller on the light-front than in instant-form dynamics. Then we show for a scattering amplitude above threshold that the stretched boxes are small, however, necessary to retain covariance. For an off energy-shell amplitude covariance is not necessarily maintained and this is confirmed by our calculations. Again, the stretched boxes are found to be small.
17 pages, revtex, 14 figures, submitted to Phys.Rev.C