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It is stated in this paper (as well as in many other) that the fermions of $4$D Euclidean $\mathcal{N}=4$ Super Yang-Mills (SYM) are Majorana fermions (see eq. (42) and (43)). However it is stated in this paper (as well as in many other) that it is impossible to have Majorana fermions in $4$D Euclidean space (apparently it is okay in Minkowski space).

What is the resolution of this apparent contradiction?

Qmechanic
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Pxx
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    Equation (43) is 16-component Majorana-Weyl spinor defined in 10-dimensions to which dimensional reduction is then applied. – bolbteppa Aug 27 '20 at 13:36
  • @bolbteppa I see. So what kind of object is it in $4$d? – Pxx Aug 27 '20 at 13:37
  • It looks like there's two things going on here. One is knowing how to obtain $N=4$ SYM in 4D from $N=1$ SYM in 10D via dimensional reduction, e.g. section 7.1 here. The second thing is then putting this action in Euclidean form with a Wick rotation, something along the lines of what is done around equation (3.3.16) here. Doing these and then adding a Faddeev-Popov ghost and gauge-fixing term gives (42). This is different to asking about the existence of Majorana/Weyl spinors in certain dimensions. – bolbteppa Aug 27 '20 at 14:03
  • @bolbteppa Right I have done the dimensional reduction, but not the Wick rotation. In any case I still find it confusing that the $\psi$ in eq. (42) is called a Majorana fermion if that is true only before the Wick rotation. They do state clearly that $\psi$ satisfies the reality condition given in eq. (43). Or does it hold after the Wick rotation as well because it has $16$ components? Sometimes the $\psi$ of eq. (42) is splitted into $4$ Weyl fermions $\lambda$, which then I guess are not Majorana? – Pxx Aug 27 '20 at 14:27
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    I'm not sure, page 107 of this says "In [119] they point out that this Wick rotation is not technically consistent because the R-symmetry group should also be Wick rotated from SU(4)(=SO(6)) to SO(5,1)..." if you want to go deeper this might help. – bolbteppa Aug 27 '20 at 15:52

1 Answers1

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The statement about not having Majorana fermions in 4d euclidean space is misleading. In the usual Minkowski space Majorana representation the gamma matrices are all purely imaginary (purely real in the less-used (-,+,+,+) metric). The Minkowski space operator-valued charge conjugate fermion field is defined by $$\psi^c= {\mathcal C}^{-1}\bar\psi^T\\ (\bar\psi)^c=-\psi^T {\mathcal C} $$where ${\mathcal C}$ is a matrix such that $$ {\mathcal C} \gamma^\mu{\mathcal C}^{-1}= -(\gamma^\mu)^T. $$

The field $\psi$ represents a Majorana particle when $\psi=\psi^c$. Consistency of this property requires that $(\psi^c)^c=\psi$ and this in turn requires that ${\mathcal C}$ be skew symmetric -- something that happens only in $d=2,3,4$ dimensions (mod 8).

In the Euclidean path integral for a Dirac field $\bar\psi$ and $\psi$ are independent Grassman variables. To get a Euclidean Majorana field we simply define $\bar\psi = -{\mathcal C}\psi^T$ so that $\psi$ and $\bar \psi$ are no longer independent.

We can take the action for a Euclidean Majorana fermion to be $$ S= \int d^4x \left\{- \frac 12 \psi^T {\mathcal C}(\gamma^\mu \partial_\mu+m)\psi \right\}. $$ In order for this expression not to vanish due to the anticommutation property of the Grassman $\psi$ we need the operator $$ D= {\mathcal C}(\gamma^\mu \partial_\mu+m) $$ to be skew symmetric in function space (where $\partial_\mu^T=-\partial_\mu)$). This only occurs in $d=2,3,4$ (mod 8). Thus Euclidean Grassman-valued Majorana fermions only exist in exactly the same dimensions as their Minkowski operator-valued bretheren. After performing the Berezin/Grassman integral we get ${\rm Det} (\gamma^\mu \partial_\mu+m)$ for a Dirac field and ${\rm Pf}[{\mathcal C}(\gamma^\mu \partial_\mu+m)]\propto \sqrt{ {\rm Det} (\gamma^\mu \partial_\mu+m)}$ for the Majorana field.

The same is true for psudo-Majorana fermions which are defined using the ${\mathcal T}$ matrix that obeys $$ {\mathcal T}\gamma^\mu {\mathcal T}^{-1}= +(\gamma^\mu)^T $$ The resulting Euclidean action $$ S= \int d^4x \left\{+ \frac 12 \psi^T {\mathcal T}(\gamma^\mu \partial_\mu)\psi \right\} $$ is non-vanishing only when ${\mathcal T}$ is symmetric and this requires $d=8,9,10$ (mod 8) which is again the condition for the existence of Minkowski operator-valued pseudo-Majorana fermions. (Note that pseudo-Majorana's are necessarily massless)

The apparent contradiction in your cited paper is because many authors identify "Majorana" with some sort of reality condition on the gamma matrices and so worry about the reality properties of the Clifford algebras ${\rm Cl}(p,q)$ which describe the properties of gamma matrices when the metric has $p$ plus signs and $q$ negative ones. These reality conditions depend intricately on $p-q$ (mod 8). This is nice mathematics, but the physical Majorana condition requires that the analytic continuation of the Euclidean path-integral correlators to the Minkowski region of momentum space coincide with the Minkowski-computed correlators, and this is related to the symmetry properties of ${\mathcal C}$ and ${\mathcal T}$ which are indifferent to the $\pm$ signs in the metric.

mike stone
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  • Hi and thanks a lot for your detailed answer! I have seen this physical Majorana condition before, but does it apply here? The authors give the usual reality condition in eq.(43) for their Majorana fermions in $4$d, and not the physical condition. Or did I miss something? – Pxx Aug 27 '20 at 14:31
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    I don't know! I had not seen your cited paper by Wetterich, before (I should have). My own understanding come from the lecture notes by Hitoshi Murayama http://hitoshi.berkeley.edu/230A/clifford.pdf. I know too little about SUSY to comment on the first paper. Indeed I failed to get to grips with SUSY when it first became popular because I was spending my days doing Euclidean-space lattice gauge theory and could not see how to translate all the SUSY Majorana stuff to Euclidean signature. I wish there ahd been Murayama lecture notes back in the 70's! – mike stone Aug 27 '20 at 14:43
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    Indeed you can have real euclidean gamma matrices in d=10 Euclidean, because ${\mathcal T}$ is symmetric and one can Takagi-diagonalize ${\mathcal T}\to {\mathcal T}'=U^T{\mathcal T}U= {\mathbb I}$. I did not see what the authors mean by $\psi^*$ though. Perhaps $\bar \psi$? There is no $\bar\psi = \psi^\dagger \gamma_0$ in Euclidean space. – mike stone Aug 27 '20 at 14:51
  • Is it not just the complex conjugate? I.e. the eom is $- i \gamma_\mu \partial^\mu \psi + m \psi_c = 0$ with $\psi_c \equiv i \psi^*$. That's how I learned to define Majorana fermions. Of course in $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM we have $m=0$. – Pxx Aug 27 '20 at 15:27
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    It can't be complex conjugation as there is no notion of complex conjgation for Grassman variables in a Euclidean path integral. – mike stone Aug 27 '20 at 16:03
  • Related: https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.00518 and https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/309890/2451 – Qmechanic Sep 02 '20 at 18:00