Talks at Nordita Programs [before October 2010]

Confinement in Ising field theory and Ising spin chain: Bethe-Salpeter equation approach

by Sergei Rutkevich (Institute of Solid State and Semiconductor Physics)

Europe/Stockholm
132:028

132:028

Description
The kink topological excitations are quite common in the two dimensional field theories with Hamiltonian invariant under some discrete symmetry group. If such symmetry is spontaneously broken in the ordered phase, the latter has a discrete set of degenerate vacuums. The kinks separating two different vacuums behave like stable quantum particles which can propagate in the system. Adding a small interaction, which explicitly breaks the Hamiltonian symmetry, lifts the degeneracy of ground states and leads to confinement of kinks. This simple scenario of confinement is realized in many two dimensional models. I review recent progress in understanding of the kink confinement in the quantum Ising spin chain, and in its continuum limit - Ising field theory, which correspond to the symmetry group Z2. This progress has been achieved due to the Bethe-Salpeter equation approach introduced by Fonseca and Zamolodchikov.