Gauge theories in anti-selfdual variables

Some years ago the Nicolai map, viewed as a change of variables from the gauge connection in a fixed gauge to the anti-selfdual part of the curvature, has been extended by the first named author to pure Yang-Mills from its original definition in N= 1 supersymmetric Yang-Mills. We study here the perturbative one-particle irreducible effective action in the anti-selfdual variables of any gauge theory, in particular pure Yang-Mills, QCD and N = 1 supersymmetric Yang-Mills. We prove that the one-loop one-particle irreducible effective action of a gauge theory mapped to the anti-selfdual variables in any gauge is identical to the one of the original theory. This is due to the conspiracy between the Jacobian of the change to the anti-selfdual variables and an extra functional determinant that arises from the non-linearity of the coupling of the anti-selfdual curvature to an external source in the Legendre transform that defines the one-particle irreducible effective action. Hence we establish the one-loop perturbative equivalence of the mapped and original theories on the basis of the identity of the one-loop one-particle irreducible effective actions. Besides, we argue that the identity of the perturbative one-particle irreducible effective actions extends order by order in perturbation theory. © 2013 SISSA, Trieste, Italy.