Ghosts Hunting in the Yang-Mills Vacuum

Abstract

In this work I analyze the zero-modes of a one-loop semi-classical Yang-Mills theory in \(3+1d\). I find the zero-modes are generated by gauge redundancy of the background field. With proper gauge fixing, via the introduction of a bosonic ghost term, and the use of zeta-function regularization, a finite one-loop effective theory is calculated in closed form, reproducing the well known one-loop Yang-Mills beta-function.