Non-linear composition and infinite conformal symmetry of topologically non-trivial solutions in $$(3+1)$$ ( 3 + 1 ) -dimensional Yang–Mills theory

Abstract

Abstract An infinite-dimensional family of analytic solutions in pure SU(2) Yang–Mills theory at finite density in $$(3+1)$$ ( 3 + 1 ) dimensions is constructed. It is labelled by two integeres (p and q) as well as by a two-dimensional free massless scalar field. The gauge field depends on all the 4 coordinates (to keep alive the topological charge) but in such a way to reduce the (3+1)-dimensional Yang–Mills field equations to the field equation of a 2D free massless scalar field. For each p and q, both the on-shell action and the energy-density reduce to the action and Hamiltonian of the corresponding 2D CFT. The topological charge density associated to the non-Abelian Chern–Simons current is non-zero. It is possible to define a non-linear composition within this family as if these configurations were “Lego blocks”. The non-linear effects of Yang–Mills theory manifest themselves since the topological charge density of the composition of two solutions is not the sum of the charge densities of the components. This leads to an upper bound on the amplitudes in order for the topological charge density to be well-defined. This suggests that if the temperature and/or the energy is/are high enough, the topological density of these configurations is not well-defined anymore. Semiclassically, one can show that (depending on whether the topological charge is even or odd) some of the operators appearing in the 2D CFT should be quantized as Fermions (despite the Bosonic nature of the classical field).