Abstract
The role of pseudoparticles in the breakdown of chiral U(N) symmetry is studied in a two-dimensional model. Chiral U(1) is always destroyed by the axial-vector anomaly. For N = 2 chiral SU(N) is also spontaneously broken yielding massive fermions and three (decoupled) Goldstone bosons. For N 3 the fermions remain massless. Realistic four-dimensional theories are believed to behave in a similar way but the critical N above which the fermions cease to be massive is not known in four dimensions.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 2526-2534 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Physical Review D |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1977 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)