No Arabic abstract
We review some recent progress in our understanding of the phase diagram of non abelian gauge theories, by varying their flavor content -- fermion representations and the number of flavors. In particular, we explore the way conformal symmetry can be restored before the loss of asymptotic freedom, and through a subtle interplay of perturbation theory, chiral dynamics and confining forces. It is with the combination of numerical lattice studies and theoretical insights into gauge theories with and without supersymmetry that we may successfully attempt to clarify the missing pieces of this puzzle.
By using the lattice Monte-Carlo simulation, we investigate the finite temperature (T) chiral phase transition at color SU(3) gauge theories with various species of fundamental fermions, and discuss the signal of the (pre-)conformality at large Nf (num. of flavors.) via their comparisons. As Nf increases, we observe stronger fermion screening effects which result from a larger fermion multiplicity. We investigate a finite T step-scaling associated with a uniqueness of the critical temperature (Tc) at each Nf, then the vanishing step-scaling indicates the emergence of the conformality around Nf* = 10 - 12. Further, motivated by the functional renormalization group analyses, we examine the Nf dependence of Tc, whose vanishing behavior indicates the onset of conformal window around Nf* = 9 - 10.
Quantum field theories of strongly interacting matter sometimes have a useful holographic description in terms of the variables of a gravitational theory in higher dimensions. This duality maps time dependent physics in the gauge theory to time dependent solutions of the Einstein equations in the gravity theory. In order to better understand the process by which real world theories such as QCD behave out of thermodynamic equilibrium, we study time dependent perturbations to states in a model of a confining, strongly coupled gauge theory via holography. Operationally, this involves solving a set of non-linear Einstein equations supplemented with specific time dependent boundary conditions. The resulting solutions allow one to comment on the timescale by which the perturbed states thermalize, as well as to quantify the properties of the final state as a function of the perturbation parameters. We comment on the influence of the dual gauge theorys confinement scale on these results, as well as the appearance of a previously anticipated universal scaling regime in the abrupt quench limit.
We highlight the progress, current status, and open challenges of QCD-driven physics, in theory and in experiment. We discuss how the strong interaction is intimately connected to a broad sweep of physical problems, in settings ranging from astrophysics and cosmology to strongly-coupled, complex systems in particle and condensed-matter physics, as well as to searches for physics beyond the Standard Model. We also discuss how success in describing the strong interaction impacts other fields, and, in turn, how such subjects can impact studies of the strong interaction. In the course of the work we offer a perspective on the many research streams which flow into and out of QCD, as well as a vision for future developments.
We present a new perspective on the nature of quark and gluon condensates in quantum chromodynamics. We suggest that the spatial support of QCD condensates is restricted to the interiors of hadrons, since these condensates arise due to the interactions of confined quarks and gluons. An analogy is drawn with order parameters like the Cooper pair condensate and spontaneous magnetization experimentally measured in finite samples in condensed matter physics. Our picture explains the results of recent studies which find no significant signal for the vacuum gluon condensate. We also give a general discussion of condensates in asymptotically free vectorial and chiral gauge theories.
Only requiring that Dirac operators decribing massless fermions on the lattice decompose into Weyl operators we arrive at a large class of them. After deriving general relations from spectral representations we study correlation functions of Weyl fermions for any value of the index, stressing the related conditions for basis transformations and getting the precise behaviors under gauge and CP transformations. Using the detailed structure of the chiral projections we also obtain a form of the correlation functions with a determinant in the general case.