title: Confinement of slave particles in U(1) gauge theories of strongly interacting electrons
abstract: We show that slave particles are always confined in U(1) gauge theories of interacting electron systems. Consequently, the low-lying degrees of freedom are different from the slave particles. This is done by constructing a dual formulation of the slave-particle representation in which the no-double-occupancy constraint becomes linear and, hence, soluble. Spin-charge separation, if it occurs, is due to the existence of solitons with fractional quantum numbers in a particular dual action.
authors.affiliation: Physics Department, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095-1547, USA.
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Nayak