No Arabic abstract
In Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) the eigenmodes of the Dirac operator with small absolute eigenvalues have a close relationship to the dynamical breaking of the chiral symmetry. In a simulation with two dynamical quarks, we study the behavior of meson propagators when removing increasingly more of those modes in the valence sector, thus partially removing effects of chiral symmetry breaking. We find that some of the symmetry aspects are restored (e.g., the masses of $rho$ and $a_1$ approach each other) while confining properties persist.
We study hadron correlators upon artificial restoration of the spontaneously broken chiral symmetry. In a dynamical lattice simulation we remove the lowest lying eigenmodes of the Dirac operator from the valence quark propagators and study evolution of the hadron masses obtained. All mesons and baryons in our study, except for a pion, survive unbreaking the chiral symmetry and their exponential decay signals become essentially better. From the analysis of the observed spectroscopic patterns we conclude that confinement still persists while the chiral symmetry is restored. All hadrons fall into different chiral multiplets. The broken U(1)_A symmetry does not get restored upon unbreaking the chiral symmetry. We also observe signals of some higher symmetry that includes chiral symmetry as a subgroup. Finally, from comparison of the Delta - N splitting before and after unbreaking of the chiral symmetry we conclude that both the color-magnetic and the flavor-spin quark-quark interactions are of equal importance.
We study the relation between quark confinement and chiral symmetry breaking in QCD. Using lattice QCD formalism, we analytically express the various confinement indicators, such as the Polyakov loop, its fluctuations, the Wilson loop, the inter-quark potential and the string tension, in terms of the Dirac eigenmodes. In the Dirac spectral representation, there appears a power of the Dirac eigenvalue $lambda_n$ such as $lambda_n^{N_t-1}$, which behaves as a reduction factor for small $lambda_n$. Consequently, since this reduction factor cannot be cancelled, the low-lying Dirac eigenmodes give negligibly small contribution to the confinement quantities,while they are essential for chiral symmetry breaking. These relations indicate no direct, one-to-one correspondence between confinement and chiral symmetry breaking in QCD. In other words, there is some independence of quark confinement from chiral symmetry breaking, which can generally lead to different transition temperatures/densities for deconfinement and chiral restoration. We also investigate the Polyakov loop in terms of the eigenmodes of the Wilson, the clover and the domain-wall fermion kernels, respectively, and find the similar results. The independence of quark confinement from chiral symmetry breaking seems to be natural, because confinement is realized independently of quark masses and heavy quarks are also confined even without the chiral symmetry.
Recently, via calculation of spatial correlators of $J=0,1$ isovector operators using a chirally symmetric Dirac operator within $N_F=2$ QCD, it has been found that QCD at temperatures $T_c - 3 T_c$ is approximately $SU(2)_{CS}$ and $SU(4)$ symmetric. The latter symmetry suggests that the physical degrees of freedom are chirally symmetric quarks bound by the chromoelectric field into color singlet objects without chromomagnetic effects. This regime of QCD has been referred to as a Stringy Fluid. Here we calculate correlators for propagation in time direction at a temperature slightly above $T_c$ and find the same approximate symmetries. This means that the meson spectral function is chiral-spin and $SU(4)$ symmetric.
The origin of the low-lying nature of the $N$*(1440), or Roper resonance, has been the subject of significant interest for many years, including several investigations using lattice QCD. The majority of lattice studies have not observed a low-lying excited state energy level in the region of the Roper resonance. However, it has been claimed that chiral symmetry could play an important role in our understanding of this resonance. The purpose of this study is to systematically examine the role of chiral symmetry in the low-lying nucleon spectrum by directly comparing the clover and overlap fermion actions. To ensure any differences in results are attributable to the choice of fermion action, simulations are performed on the same set of gauge field configurations at matched pion masses. Correlation matrix techniques are employed to determine the excitation energy of the first positive-parity excited state for each action. The clover and overlap actions show a remarkable level of agreement. We do not find any evidence that fermion action chiral symmetry plays a significant role in understanding the Roper resonance on the lattice.
We investigate general properties of the eigenvalue spectrum for improved staggered quarks. We introduce a new chirality operator $[gamma_5 otimes 1]$ and a new shift operator $[1 otimes xi_5]$, which respect the same recursion relation as the $gamma_5$ operator in the continuum. Then we show that matrix elements of the chirality operator sandwiched between two eigenstates of the staggered Dirac operator are related to those of the shift operator by the Ward identity of the conserved $U(1)_A$ symmetry of staggered fermion actions. We perform a numerical study in quenched QCD using HYP staggered quarks to demonstrate the Ward identity. We introduce a new concept of leakage patterns which collectively represent the matrix elements of the chirality operator and the shift operator sandwiched between two eigenstates of the staggered Dirac operator. The leakage pattern provides a new method to identify zero modes and non-zero modes in the Dirac eigenvalue spectrum. This method is as robust as the spectral flow method but requires much less computing power. Analysis using a machine learning technique confirms that the leakage pattern is universal, since the staggered Dirac eigenmodes on normal gauge configurations respect it. In addition, the leakage pattern can be used to determine a ratio of renormalization factors as a by-product. We conclude that it might be possible and realistic to measure the topological charge $Q$ using the Atiya-Singer index theorem and the leakage pattern of the chirality operator in the staggered fermion formalism.