# Comment on the paper: “Feynman-Schwinger representation approach to nonperturbative physics” by Ç. Şavklı et al. [Phys. Rev. C 60, 055210 (1999), hep-ph/9906211]

## Abstract

We point out that the scalar Wick-Cutkosky model (with $`\chi ^2\varphi `$ interaction) used in this study has been known for a long time to be unstable. However, the numerical results presented in this paper do not show any sign of this instability which casts some doubt on their reliability. We compare with the worldline variational approach.

Worldline methods (sometimes called the “particle represention of field theory”) have experienced a revival in the last few years (see e.g. Ref. ), both in perturbative and nonperturbative studies. In a recent paper, Şavklı et al.  have applied what they call the “Feynman-Schwinger representation” to various field theoretic models  . Among these they also discuss the theory of charged scalar particles $`\chi `$ of mass $`m`$ interacting through the exchange of a neutral scalar particle $`\varphi `$ of mass $`\mu `$ whose (Euclidean) Lagrangian is given by (Eq. (3.1))

$$=\chi ^{}\left[m^2^2+g\varphi \right]\chi +\frac{1}{2}\varphi \left(\mu ^2^2\right)\varphi .$$
(1)   
This is usually referred to as “Wick-Cutkosky model”  and has been studied extensively in the context of the bound-state problem in quantum field theory. In these studies self-energy corrections are generally omitted and the exchange of neutral particles is restricted to be of the ladder type only. However, it is well known that the full theory described by the Lagrangian (1) is unstable. This is quite plausible already in a classical description by recognizing that the interaction term $`g\chi ^{}\chi \varphi `$ is equivalent to a $`\mathrm{\Phi }^3`$-term whose potential is unbounded from below, but has been proven more rigorously by Baym  nearly 40 years ago. Note that this instability is also present in the quenched approximation where closed particle loops are neglected. This can be easily seen, for example, from Eqs. (3.3)  and (3.4) in Ref.  which give the full two-particle propagator – or any other $`n`$-point function – in terms of

$$S(x,y)=y\left|\frac{1}{m^2^2+g\varphi }\right|x$$
(2)   
before the functional integration over the field $`\varphi `$ has been performed. Although $`m^2^2`$ is a positive definite operator it is obvious that for $`g0`$ there will be always (negative) field configurations $`\varphi `$ which lead to a vanishing of the denominator. If the singularity is properly treated, one therefore obtains an imaginary part of the euclidean $`n`$-point function  which for the propgator can be interpreted as width of the metastable state . This happens irrespective whether the additional determinant in the functional integral over $`\varphi `$ is set to a constant (quenched approximation) or taken fully into account .

The authors of Ref.  present Monte-Carlo results for the quenched single-particle propagator (based on a discretized and Wick-rotated version of the Feynman-Schwinger representation) where the self-energy is the only mechanism to dress the bare propagator. Therefore their results should be sensitive to the above-mentioned deficiency of the Wick-Cutkosky model. However, Fig. 8 in their paper shows no sign of the instability over a wide range of coupling constants. This casts serious doubts on the reliability of their numerical results and the claimed “calculation of nonperturbative propagators”. We do not know the reason for this failure: perhaps it is due to the recipe used in Eq. (3.22) to suppress unwanted oscillations in the integral over the proper time $`s`$ or other numerical problems. Another possibility is that it results from using (in the authors’ words) “a rather small cutoff parameter” $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=3\mu `$ in the Pauli-Villars regularization. In any case, we believe that it is a serious failure and should be investigated in more detail. In this context we also note that in Ref.  the necessary renormalization has not been performed, although, in principle, it is straightforward in a super-renormalizable theory like the Wick-Cutkosky model: the cutoff should be sent to infinity while keeping the physical mass at its measured value. Without that a drastic cutoff-dependence of the results is inevitable.

The authors of Ref.  further present perturbative results for the self-energy of a single particle in the (quenched) Wick-Cutkosky model. Solving for the physical mass $`M`$ in the gap-like equation (3.40) they find that “the dressed mass $`M`$ decreases up to a critical value $`g_{\mathrm{crit}}`$ which occurs when the mass reaches … $`M_{\mathrm{crit}}=0.094`$ GeV. For this simple case the critical coupling is given by

$$g_{\mathrm{crit}}=\mathrm{\hspace{0.25em}22.2}\mathrm{GeV}.$$
(3)   
For larger values of $`g`$ there are no real solutions, showing that the dressed particle is unstable”. As we have pointed out to the authors  this critical coupling constant is a far cry from the one obtained in a worldline variational approach  which gave $`\alpha _{\mathrm{crit}}\overline{g}_{\mathrm{crit}}^2/(4\pi M^2)=\mathrm{\hspace{0.25em}0.81}`$ where $`2\overline{g}g`$ (cf. Eq. (15) in Ref.  with Eq. (3.4) in the paper under discussion). In this calculation, the physical mass $`M`$ was always kept at $`0.939`$ GeV and $`\mu =0.14`$ GeV. In contrast, Eq. (3) for the slightly different value $`\mu =0.15`$ GeV leads to the totally unrealistic value $`\alpha _{\mathrm{crit}}=(11.1/0.094)^2/(4\pi )1100`$ which only shows that perturbation theory cannot be applied in the nonperturbative regime.

In summary, we think that one of the few things one can learn from applying nonperturbative methods to an unrealistic model like the Wick-Cutkosky model is whether the specific method is capable to catch some genuine nonperturbative aspects. In the one-(heavy)-particle sector this is mainly the instability of that model . Neither the perturbative calculation nor the supposedly “exact” numerical Monte-Carlo calculation in Ref.  fare well in this respect.