The phase of the scattering operator from the geometry of certain infinite-dimensional groups (Q471599)

The author proposes a method to compute the phase of the Dirac fermion scattering operator in external gauge fields by relating it to the restricted unitary group of the Hilbert space of square-integrable fermion fields polarized with respect to the free Hamiltonian. Let us describe the content in a little more detail. A polarization \(H=H^+\oplus H^-\) of a Hilbert space \(H\) is a decomposition into the positive and negative eigenspaces \(H^+\) and \(H^-\) of some operator on \(H\), which is in our case the free Hamiltonian. The restricted linear group \(\mathrm{GL}_{\mathrm{res}}H\) consists of all bounded linear operators \(g:H\longrightarrow H\) preserving this decomposition up to a Hilbert-Schmidt operator. The restricted unitary group \(U_{\mathrm{res}}(H)\) is the unitary subgroup of \(\mathrm{GL}_{\mathrm{res}}H\). The group \(\mathrm{GL}_{\mathrm{res}}(H)\) admits a nice central extension \(\widehat{G}_{\mathrm{res}}(H)\) by \(\mathbb{C}^*\), which is a nontrivial \(\mathbb{C}^*\)-bundle over \(\mathrm{GL}_{\mathrm{res}}(H)\). This bundle admits a connection \(1\)-form, which is closely related to the Lie algebra structure; its curvature is connected explicitly to Lie algebra data and it is used to define parallel transport. Identifying the Hilbert space \(H\) with the space of states of a Dirac fermion, one can study the unitary time evolution in \(H\) in the presence of some external gauge potential \(A\). In general this time evolution operator is not contained in \(U_{\mathrm{res}}(H)\); nevertheless a `renormalized' variant is. Via parallel transport the connection determines a unique choice of the phase of the quantum scattering operator.