Paper detail

Pauli-Villars regularization of field theories on the light front

Four-dimensional quantum field theories generally require regularization to be well defined. This can be done in various ways, but here we focus on Pauli--Villars (PV) regularization and apply it to nonperturbative calculations of bound states. The philosophy is to introduce enough PV fields to the Lagrangian to regulate the theory perturbatively, including preservation of symmetries, and assume that this is sufficient for the nonperturbative case. The numerical methods usually necessary for nonperturbative bound-state problems are then applied to a finite theory that has the original symmetries. The bound-state problem is formulated as a mass eigenvalue problem in terms of the light-front Hamiltonian. Applications to quantum electrodynamics are discussed.