“Yang-Mills-Chern-Simons theory and the mass gap”

All fundamental interactions except gravity, i.e. the electroweak and strong nuclear forces, are described by Yang-Mills theory, which can be seen as a non-linear generalization of Maxwell’s equations for electromagnetism. Formally, these theories are scale invariant and have no dimensionful parameters. But while the electromagnetic forces are indeed mediated by massless photons, e.g. the corresponding gluons that mediate the strong force mysteriously acquire masses. This is an outstanding and presumably extremely difficult problem of physics and mathematics. In this talk, I will sketch an approach to understanding some of this in a much simpler setting: A Hamiltonian treatment of Yang-Mills theory, possibly including a further interaction due to Chern and Simons, on a compact spatial two-manifold instead of in flat three-dimensional space.

Transmisión en vivo vía bit.ly/YouTube_ICF

Participante: Prof. Måns Henningson

Institución: Universidad de Gotemburgo

Fecha y hora: Martes, 27 de Mayo de 2025 a las 12:00