Lorentz Symmetry Violation in QCD and the Frustration of Asymptotic Freedom

Abstract

We study the effect of Lorentz symmetry violation (LSV) on the behaviour at high energy of SU(N) gauge theory with quarks in the fundamental representation. The approach is similar to that for QED treated in a previous paper. In contrast to QED, standard Lorentz invariant QCD is asymptotically free. Our aim is to explore the structure of the renormalisation group at high energy and hence weak coupling without requiring the Lorentz symmetry breaking to be small. The simplest type of LSV leaves the theory invariant under a subgroup of the Lorentz group that preserves a (time-like) 4-vector. We examine this case in detail and find that asymptotic freedom is frustrated. That is, at sufficiently high energy the running coupling constant attains a minimum value before increasing again, while the LSV parameter increases without bound.