Symmetry breaking via fermion 4-point functions

Abstract

We construct the effective action and gap equations for nonperturbative fermion 4-point functions. Our results apply to situations in which fermion masses can be ignored, which is the case for theories of strong flavor interactions involving standard quarks and leptons above the electroweak scale. The structure of the gap equations is different from what a naive generalization of the 2-point case would suggest, and we find for example that gauge exchanges are insufficient to generate nonperturbative 4-point functions when the number of colors is large.