A How to write Wick contractions in L TEX Sthitadhi Roy January 13, 2012

In High Energy Physics as well as in many other areas, Wicks algebra is a very important mathematical tool, and the crux of this algebra is the Wicks contraction. This document is a very very short manual about how to typeset A Wicks contractions in L TEX. Just as an example, this is how contractions look like. a (t1 )a (t1 )aj (t1 )ai (t1 )a (t2 )a (t2 )aj (t2 )ai (t2 ) . i j i j

Syntax
A As always, L TEXhas a package called simplewick for this purpose. It can be installed from any package manager or one can just download the simplewick.sty le from the CTAN site. The syntax is explained with this following very simple example. The segment of the code is

$$ \contraction{}{A}{B}{C} \contraction[2ex]{A}{B}{C}{D} ABCD $$ and this is rendered as ABCD The parameters of the syntax can be understood by looking at the above example. They are as follows: The rst argument which is optional is the height of the contraction. When omitted like in the rst it is just the default 1ex. The second argument is the part of the expression before the contraction starts. The third argument contains on the expression over which the start of the contraction is centered. The fourth argument contains the expression which lies under the contraction. Finally the fth argument shows where the end of the contraction centers itself. 1

Finally, one should note that the contraction command simply decides the contraction and doesnt typeset the contents of the expression. For this purpose, one has to write the expression as done in the example. Just as a more complicated example the code for the contraction at the start of the document is $$ \contraction{}{a}{{}^{\dagger}_i(t_1)a^{\dagger}_j(t_1)}{a} % \contraction[2ex]{a^{\dagger}_i(t_1)}{a}{% {}^{\dagger}_j(t_1)a_j(t_1)a_i(t_1)% a^{\dagger}_i(t_2)a^{\dagger}_j(t_2)a_j(t_2)}{a} % \contraction[3ex]{a^{\dagger}_i(t_1)% a^{\dagger}_j(t_1)a_j(t_1)}{a}{{}_i(t_1)% a^{\dagger}_i(t_2)}{a} % \bcontraction{a^{\dagger}_i(t_1)% a^{\dagger}_j(t_1)a_j(t_1)a_i(t_1)}% {a}{{}^{\dagger}_i(t_2)a^{\dagger}_j(t_2)}{a} % a^{\dagger}_i(t_1)a^{\dagger}_j(t_1)a_j(t_1)a_i(t_1) a^{\dagger}_i(t_2)a^{\dagger}_j(t_2)a_j(t_2)a_i(t_2)\,. $$

Contractions with and without stress

The macro contraction is prone to giving not entirely satisfactory results when the formula is under stress or tension, i.e., when TEX shrinks or stretches the glue from its natural width. Like for example if we try to t the formula in the box, then what happens is the formula is used but the contraction isnt and it doesnt quite end centrally or something like this happens. For this we use the command nomathglue. Example, the command $ \contraction{}{\bar G}{{}_1(\mathbf{q}_1)\>\>{}}{\bar G} \nomathglue{% \bar G_1(\mathbf{q}_1)\>\>{}\bar G_2(\mathbf{q}_2)} =\bar\chi_{12}(\mathbf{q}_1-\mathbf{q}_2) $ yields G1 (q1 ) G2 (q2 ) = 12 (q1 q2 )