No Arabic abstract
A new method to study nuclear physics via holographic QCD is proposed. Multiple baryons in the Sakai-Sugimoto background are described by a matrix model which is a low energy effective theory of D-branes of the baryon vertices. We study the quantum mechanics of the matrix model and calculate the eigenstates of the Hamiltonian. The obtained states are found to coincide with known nuclear and baryonic states, and have appropriate statistics and charges. Calculated spectra of the baryon/nucleus for small baryon numbers show good agreement with experimental data. For hyperons, the Gell-Mann--Okubo formula is approximately derived. Baryon resonances up to spin $5/2$ and isospin $5/2$ and dibaryon spectra are obtained and compared with experimental data. The model partially explains even the magic numbers of light nuclei, $N=2,8$ and $20$.
We study the physics with finite nuclear density in the framework of AdS/QCD with holographic baryon field included. Based on a mean field type approach, we introduce the nucleon density as a bi-fermion condensate of the lowest mode of the baryon field and calculate the density dependence of the chiral condensate and the nucleon mass. We observe that the chiral condensate as well as the mass of nucleon decrease with increasing nuclear density. We also consider the mass splitting of charged vector mesons in iso-spin asymmetric nuclear matter.
We establish a holographic bottom-up model which covers both the baryonic and quark matter phases in cold and dense QCD. This is obtained by including the baryons using simple approximation schemes in the V-QCD model, which also includes the backreaction of the quark matter to the dynamics of pure Yang-Mills. We examine two approaches for homogeneous baryon matter: baryons as a thin layer of noninteracting matter in the holographic bulk, and baryons with a homogeneous bulk gauge field. We find that the second approach exhibits phenomenologically reasonable features. At zero temperature, the vacuum, baryon, and quark matter phases are separated by strongly first order transitions as the chemical potential varies. The equation of state in the baryonic phase is found to be stiff, i.e., the speed of sound clearly exceeds the value $c_s^2=1/3$ of conformal plasmas at high baryon densities.
A holographic model of QCD axion is presented. It describes a composite axion in the KSVZ class. Having a gravity dual, based on the Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto model, it is calculable in the strongly coupled regime. Its basic properties are derived, including the low energy Lagrangian, from which the axion couplings to nucleons can be derived. Basic features in the deconfined phase are studied as well. In particular, the temperature dependence of the axion mass is extracted from the topological susceptibility. As an aside, the topological susceptibility of strongly coupled ${cal N}=4$ SYM at finite temperature is derived for the first time.
In this article a systematic quantitative analysis of the isoscalar bosonic states is performed in the framework of supersymmetric light front holographic QCD. It is shown that the spectroscopy of the $eta$ and $h$ mesons can be well described if one additional mass parameter -- which corresponds to the hard breaking of chiral $U(1)$ symmetry in standard QCD -- is introduced. The mass difference of the $eta$ and $eta$ isoscalar mesons is then determined by the strange quark mass content of the $eta$. The theory also predicts the existence of isoscalar tetraquarks which are bound states of diquarks and anti-diquarks. The candidates for these exotic isoscalar tetraquarks are identified. In particular, the $f_0(1500)$ is identified as isoscalar tetraquark; the predicted mass value 1.52 GeV agrees with the measured experimental value within the model uncertainties.
Using the AdS/CFT correspondence, we probe the scale-dependence of thermalization in strongly coupled field theories following a quench, via calculations of two-point functions, Wilson loops and entanglement entropy in d=2,3,4. In the saddlepoint approximation these probes are computed in AdS space in terms of invariant geometric objects - geodesics, minimal surfaces and minimal volumes. Our calculations for two-dimensional field theories are analytical. In our strongly coupled setting, all probes in all dimensions share certain universal features in their thermalization: (1) a slight delay in the onset of thermalization, (2) an apparent non-analyticity at the endpoint of thermalization, (3) top-down thermalization where the UV thermalizes first. For homogeneous initial conditions the entanglement entropy thermalizes slowest, and sets a timescale for equilibration that saturates a causality bound over the range of scales studied. The growth rate of entanglement entropy density is nearly volume-independent for small volumes, but slows for larger volumes.