## Terry Tao and gauge theories

29/09/2008

I have found a beatiful post by Terry Tao, a Fields medallist, about gauge theories. See here for a worthwhile reading. This post is truly elucidating and so well written that I thought it was worthing a larger audience.

## Classical scalar theory in D=1+1 and gradient expansion

29/09/2008

As said before a pde with a large parameter has the spatial variations that are negligible. Let us see this for a very simple case. We consider the following equation

$\frac{\partial^2\phi}{\partial t^2}-\frac{\partial^2\phi}{\partial x^2}-\lambda\phi^3=0$

with the conditions $\phi(0,t)=0$, $\phi(1,t)=0$ and $\phi(x,0)=x^2-x$ where the choice of a parabolic profile is arbitrary and can be changed. We also know that, if we can neglect the spatial part, the solution can be written down analytically as (see here and here):

$\phi\approx (x^2-x){\rm sn}\left[(x^2-x)\sqrt{\frac{\lambda}{2}}t+x_0,i\right]$

being $x_0={\rm cn}^{-1}(0,i)$. Indeed, for $\lambda = 5000$ we get the following pictures

Numerical Curves - t is chosen as 0=red, 1/8=blue, 1/4=green, 0.3=yellow

and

Analytical solution - t chosen as above

The agreement is excellent confirming the fact that a strong coupling expansion is a gradient expansion. So, a large perturbation entering into a differential equation can be managed much in the same way one does for a small perturbation. In the case of ode look at this post.