Color Memory: A Yang-Mills Analog of Gravitational Wave Memory

Phys Rev Lett. 2017 Dec 29;119(26):261602. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.261602. Epub 2017 Dec 28.

Abstract

A transient color flux across null infinity in classical Yang-Mills theory is considered. It is shown that a pair of test "quarks" initially in a color singlet generically acquire net color as a result of the flux. A nonlinear formula is derived for the relative color rotation of the quarks. For a weak color flux, the formula linearizes to the Fourier transform of the soft gluon theorem. This color memory effect is the Yang-Mills analog of the gravitational memory effect.