— We define a notion of Markov process indexed by curves drawn on a compact surface and taking its values in a compact Lie group. We call such a process a two-dimensional Markovian holonomy field. The prototype of this class of processes, and the only one to have been constructed before the present work, is the canonical process under the Yang-Mills measure, first defined by Ambar Sengupta [32]...

We discuss the physics of a single Dp–brane in the presence of a background electromagnetic field Bij . It has recently been shown [1] that, in a specific α ′ → 0 limit, the physics of the brane is correctly described by noncommutative Yang–Mills theory, where the noncommutative gauge potential is given explicitly in terms of the ordinary U(1) field. In a previous paper [2] the physics of a D2–...

The infrared properties of the high-temperature limit of Landau-gauge Yang-Mills theory are investigated. In a first step the high-temperature limit of the Dyson-Schwinger equations is taken. The resulting equations are identical to the Dyson-Schwinger equations of the dimensionally reduced theory, a three-dimensional Yang-Mills theory coupled to an effective adjoint Higgs field. These equation...

Let P be a principal U(1)-bundle over a closed manifold M . On P , one can define a modified version of the Ricci flow called the Ricci Yang-Mills flow, due to these equations being a coupling of Ricci flow and the Yang-Mills heat flow. We use maximal regularity theory and ideas of Simonett concerning the asymptotic behavior of abstract quasilinear parabolic partial differential equations to st...

We analyze the gaugino condensation in the effective theory for N=1 SU(N) Supersymmetric QCD with Nf flavors. It is known that taking the vacuum expectation value of the matter field to be infinite, we can show that gaugino condensation can occur. At such a limit we should consider only pure supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. But when we include an interaction term of order O( 1 v ), the situati...

Based on chiral ring relations and anomalies, as described by Cachazo, Douglas, Seiberg and Witten, we argue that the holomorphic effective action in N=2 Yang-Mills theory can be understood as an integrated U(1) anomaly from a purely field theory point of view. In particular, we show that the periods of the Riemann surface arising from the generalized Konishi anomaly can be given a physical int...

We introduce a simple method to extract the representation content of the spectrum of a system with SU(2) symmetry from its partition function. The method is easily generalized to systems with SO(2,4) symmetry, such as conformal field theories in four dimensions. As a specific application we obtain an explicit generating function for the representation content of free planar Yang-Mills theory o...

We propose a method to calculate the expectation values of an operator similar to the Wilson loop in the large N limit of field theories. We consider N = 4 3+1 dimensional super-Yang-Mills. The prescription involves calculating the area of a fundamental string worldsheet in certain supergravity backgrounds. We also consider the case of coincident M-theory fivebranes where one is lead to calcula...

Based on the background field method, we derive a novel reformulation of the Yang-Mills theory which was proposed recently by the author to derive quark confinement in QCD. This reformulation identifies the Yang-Mills theory with a deformation of a topological quantum field theory. The relevant background is given by the topologically non-trivial field configuration, especially, the topological...