Vacuum correlations of the stress-energy-momentum tensor with constituent quarks

Abstract

The two point correlation function of the stress-energy-momentum tensor describes the propagation of a space-time "micro-earthquake" in the vacuum. In the framework of the path integral formulation of field theory in curved space-time, we derive the Ward-Takashi identity for two-point Green's function of the stress-energy-momentum tensor for a general case of a non-conformal theory. The identity constrains the longitudinal part of the correlator, with the vacuum expectation value of the stress-energy-momentum, non-zero in a non-conformal theory. The obtained formula is demonstrated on the free massive Dirac fermion theory, treated at the one-loop level. This example befits a class of phenomenological chiral quarks models which have been used successfully in numerous applications in the soft non-perturbative regime of strong interactions. We discuss the constraints following from the Ward-Takahashi identity for the correlation functions in these models. We also show how the temporal representation of the two-point correlators, which is an object amenable to lattice QCD, displays an expected exponential fall-off.