No Arabic abstract
We investigate the physical spectrum of vector-like SU(N) gauge theories with infrared coupling close to but above the critical value for a conformal phase transition. We use dispersion relations, the momentum dependence of the dynamical fermion mass and resonance saturation. We show that the second spectral function sum rule is substantially affected by the continuum contribution, allowing for a reduction of the axial vector - vector mass splitting with respect to QCD-like theories. In technicolor theories, this feature can result in a small or even negative contribution to the electroweak S parameter.
We discuss the existence of a conformal phase in SU(N) gauge theories in four dimensions. In this lattice study we explore the model in the bare parameter space, varying the lattice coupling and bare mass. Simulations are carried out with three colors and twelve flavors of dynamical staggered fermions in the fundamental representation. The analysis of the chiral order parameter and the mass spectrum of the theory indicates the restoration of chiral symmetry at zero temperature and the presence of a Coulomb-like phase, depicting a scenario compatible with the existence of an infrared stable fixed point at nonzero coupling. Our analysis supports the conclusion that the onset of the conformal window for QCD-like theories is smaller than Nf=12, before the loss of asymptotic freedom at sixteen and a half flavors. We discuss open questions and future directions.
We investigate SU(3) gauge theories in four dimensions with Nf fundamental fermions, on a lattice using the Wilson fermion. Clarifying the vacuum structure in terms of Polyakov loops in spatial directions and properties of temporal propagators using a new method local analysis, we conjecture that the conformal region exists together with the confining region and the deconfining region in the phase structure parametrized by beta and K, both in the cases of the large Nf QCD within the conformal window (referred as Conformal QCD) with an IR cutoff and small Nf QCD at T/Tc>1 with Tc being the chiral transition temperature (referred as High Temperature QCD). Our numerical simulation on a lattice of the size 16^3 x 64 shows the following evidence of the conjecture. In the conformal region we find the vacuum is the nontrivial Z(3) twisted vacuum modified by non-perturbative effects and temporal propagators of meson behave at large t as a power-law corrected Yukawa-type decaying form. The transition from the conformal region to the deconfining region or the confining region is a sharp transition between different vacua and therefore it suggests a first order transition both in Conformal QCD and in High Temperature QCD. Within our fixed lattice simulation, we find that there is a precise correspondence between Conformal QCD and High Temperature QCD in the temporal propagators under the change of the parameters Nf and T/Tc respectively. In particular, we find the correspondence between Conformal QCD with Nf = 7 and High Temperature QCD with Nf=2 at T ~ 2 Tc being in close relation to a meson unparticle model. From this we estimate the anomalous mass dimension gamma* = 1.2 (1) for Nf=7. We also show that the asymptotic state in the limit T/Tc --> infty is a free quark state in the Z(3) twisted vacuum.
We describe a class of diffeomorphism invariant SU(N) gauge theories in N^2 dimensions, together with some matter couplings. These theories have (N^2-3)(N^2-1) local degrees of freedom, and have the unusual feature that the constraint associated with time reparametrizations is identically satisfied. A related class of SU(N) theories in N^2-1 dimensions has the constraint algebra of general relativity, but has more degrees of freedom. Non-perturbative quantization of the first type of theory via SU(N) spin networks is briefly outlined.
We review recent results on the theta dependence of the ground-state energy and spectrum of four-dimensional SU(N) gauge theories, where theta is the coefficient of the CP-violating topological term F-Fdual in the Lagrangian. In particular, we discuss the results obtained by Monte Carlo simulations of the lattice formulation of QCD, which allow the investigation of theta dependence around theta=0 by determining the moments of the topological charge distribution, and their correlations with other observables. The results for N=3 and larger values of N support the scenario obtained by general large-N scaling arguments.
We use gauge/gravity duality to study simultaneously the mass spectrum and the thermodynamics of a generic quasi-conformal gauge theory, specified by its beta function. The beta function of a quasi-conformal theory almost vanishes, and the coupling is almost constant between two widely separated energy scales. Depending on whether the gravity dual has a black hole or not, the mass spectrum is either a spectrum of quasinormal oscillations or a normal T=0 mass spectrum. The mass spectrum is quantitatively correlated with the thermal properties of the system. As the theory approaches conformality, the masses have to vanish. We show that in this limit, the masses calculated via gauge/gravity duality satisfy expected scaling properties.