Asymptotic Symmetries of Massless QED in Even Dimensions
Abstract
We consider the scattering of massless particles coupled to an abelian gauge field in 2n-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. Weinberg's soft photon theorem is recast as Ward identities for infinitely many new nontrivial symmetries of the massless QED S-matrix, with one such identity arising for each propagation direction of the soft photon. These symmetries are identified as large gauge transformations with angle-dependent gauge parameters that are constant along the null generators of null infinity. Almost all of the symmetries are spontaneously broken in the standard vacuum and the soft photons are the corresponding Goldstone bosons. Our result establishes a relationship between soft theorems and asymptotic symmetry groups in any even dimension.
Additional Information
© 2018 International Press of Boston, Inc. Special Issue: Proceedings of the Strings 2016 Conference in Beijing Guest Editors: J. Maldacena (Institute for Advanced Study), H. Ooguri (California Institute of Technology), H. Babak (Harvard University), S. Li (Tsinghua University), W. Song (Tsinghua University), and H. Lin (Tsinghua University) We are grateful to T. He, D. Jafferis, P. Mitra, S. Pasterski, A. Porfyriadis, M. Schwartz and A. Zhiboedov for useful conversations. This work was supported in part by DOE grant DE-FG02-91ER40654 and the Fundamental Laws Initiative at Harvard. The work of V.L. is supported in part by the Sherman Fairchild scholarship and DOE grant DE-SC0011632.Attached Files
Published - ATMP-2017-0021-0007-a006.pdf
Submitted - 1412.2763v1.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 52927
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20141216-213004245
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- DE-FG02-91ER40654
- Harvard University
- Sherman Fairchild Foundation
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- DE-SC0011632
- Created
-
2014-12-17Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics
- Other Numbering System Name
- CALT-TH
- Other Numbering System Identifier
- 2014-164