Speaker
Prof.
Herbert Weigel Weigel
(Physics Department Stellenbosch University)
Description
I present a computation of the fermion contribution to the vacuum polarization energy of string-like configurations in a non--Abelian gauge theory. I establish this method by numerically verifying the invariance under (a subset of) local gauge transformations. This also provides further support for the use of spectral methods to compute vacuum polarization energies in general. I confirm that the vacuum energy in the MS-bar renormalization scheme is much smaller than the mass of the fluctuating fermion field. Numerical results for the on-shell scheme are presented and the possibility of string stabilization via quantum effects is discussed.
Primary author
Prof.
Herbert Weigel Weigel
(Physics Department Stellenbosch University)
