String worldsheet for accelerating quark

Hubeny, Veronika E.; Semenoff, Gordon W.

Abstract

We consider the AdS bulk dual to an external massive quark in SYM following an arbitrary trajectory on Minkowski background. While a purely outgoing boundary condition on the gluonic field allows one to express the corresponding string worldsheet in a closed form, the setup has curious consequences. In particular, we argue that any quark whose trajectory on flat spacetime approaches that of a light ray in the remote past (as happens e.g. in the case of uniform acceleration) must necessarily be accompanied by an anti-quark. This is puzzling from the field theory standpoint, since one would expect that a sole quark following any timelike trajectory should be allowed. We explain the resolution in terms of boundary and initial conditions. We analyze the configuration in global AdS, which naturally suggests a modification to the boundary conditions allowing for a single accelerated quark without accompanying anti-quark. We contrast this resolution with earlier proposals.

Citation

Hubeny, V. E., & Semenoff, G. W. (2015). String worldsheet for accelerating quark. Journal of High Energy Physics, 2015(10), Article 71. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep10%282015%29071

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 30, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Oct 12, 2015
• Publication Date: Oct 31, 2015
• Deposit Date: Apr 24, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 24, 2019
• Journal: Journal of High Energy Physics
• Print ISSN: 1126-6708
• Publisher: Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2015
• Issue: 10
• Article Number: 71
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep10%282015%29071