Dynamical Mass Reduction in the Massive Yang-Mills Spectrum in 1+1 dimensions

Abstract

The (1+1)-dimensional SU}(N) Yang-Mills Lagrangian, with bare mass M, and gauge coupling e, naively describes gluons of mass M. In fact, renormalization forces M to infinity. The system is in a confined phase, instead of a Higgs phase. The spectrum of this diverging-bare-mass theory contains particles of finite mass. There are an infinite number of physical particles, which are confined hadron-like bound states of fundamental colored excitations. These particles transform under irreducible representations of the global subgroup of the explicitly-broken gauge symmetry. The fundamental excitations are those of the SU(N) X SU(N) principal chiral sigma model, with coupling e/M. We find the masses of meson-like bound states of two elementary excitations. This is done using the exact S matrix of the sigma model. We point out that the color-singlet spectrum coincides with that of the weakly-coupled anisotropic SU(N) gauge theory in 2+1 dimensions. We also briefly comment on how the spectrum behaves in the 't Hooft limit, with N approaching infinity.