Examples of Gribov copies in the presence of planar boundaries, and an emergent boundary gauge invariance in Yang-Mills theory

Abstract

First, we explicitly construct zero-modes of the Yang-Mills Faddeev-Popov operator in the presence of two parallel plates, with either perfect electric (PEC) or perfect magnetic (PMC) boundary conditions imposed. This establishes the existence of Gribov copies with finite action, and even finite L_2-norm, in Yang-Mills theory with non-trivial interfaces. We adapt Henyey's construction, although the boundary configuration imposes extra restrictions on the ansatz for the gauge field. Second, we discuss the phenomenon of an emergent boundary gauge invariance for PEC and PMC plates in Yang-Mills theory. This shall be important when applying the Gribov-Zwanziger procedure to parallel plate setups, of relevance for non-perturbatively studying the non-Abelian Casimir effect in the future.