Criterion for dynamical chiral symmetry breaking

Jain, Bithika; Mitra, Indrajit; Sharatchandra, H. S.

Criterion for dynamical chiral symmetry breaking

Authors

Jain, Bithika

Mitra, Indrajit

Sharatchandra, H. S.

Description

The Bethe-Salpeter equation is related to a generalized quantum-mechanical Hamiltonian. Instability of the presumed vacuum, indicated by a tachyon, is related to a negative energy eigenstate of this Hamiltonian. The variational method shows that an arbitrarily weak long-range attraction leads to chiral symmetry breaking, except in the scale-invariant case when the instability occurs at a critical value of the coupling. In the case of short-range attraction, an upper bound for the critical coupling is obtained.
10 pages, 2 figures; made minor changes, published version