Universality in two-dimensional gauge theory Original Research Article

We discuss two-dimensional Yang-Mills theories with massless fermions in arbitrary representations of a gauge group G. It is shown that the physics (spectrum and interactions) of the massive states in such models is independent of the detailed structure of the model, and only depends on the gauge group G and an integer k measuring the total anomaly. The massless physics, which does depend on the details of the model, decouples (almost) completely from that of the massive one. As an example, we discuss the equivalence of QCD2 coupled to fermions in the adjoint, and fundamental representations.