HEP/Astro Seminar -- Wednesday, 21 February 2001

Nontopological finite temperature induced fermion number

Gerald Dunne, (U. Conn.)

Abstract

Topologically nontrivial backgrounds can induce novel quantum numbers on fermion fields. In this talk I discuss this phenomenon at finite temperature, where some new features arise. While the zero temperature induced fermion number in a chiral sigma model background depends only on the asymptotic values of the chiral field, at finite temperature the induced fermion number depends also on the detailed shape of the chiral background. This can be interpreted physically as the different effect of the chiral background on virtual pairs of the Dirac sea and on the real particles of the thermal plasma.

References

Nontopological finite temperature induced fermion number, I. J. R. Aitchison and G. V. Dunne, hep-th/0006229

Finite temperature effective action in monopole background, G. V. Dunne and J. Feinberg, Phys. Lett. B477, 474 (2000), hep-th/9912195

On the finite temperature Chern-Simons coefficient, G. V. Dunne, K. Lee and C. Liu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 3434 (1997), hep-th/9612194

3:30pm, Smith Lab 1094