The string breaking phenomenon in QCD can be studied using the gauge/string duality. In this approach, one can make estimates of some of the string breaking distances at non-zero temperature and baryon chemical potential. These point towards the enhancement of baryon production in strong decays of heavy mesons in dense baryonic medium.
We consider the string breaking phenomenon within effective string models which purport to mimic QCD with two light flavors, with a special attention to baryon modes. We make some estimates of the string breaking distances at zero and non-zero baryon chemical potentials. Our estimates point towards the enhancement of baryon production in strong decays of heavy mesons in dense baryonic matter. We also suggest that the enhanced production of $Lambda_c^+$ baryons in PbPb collisions is mainly due to larger values of chemical potential.
Making use of the gauge/string duality, it is possible to study some aspects of the string breaking phenomenon in the three quark system. Our results point out that the string breaking distance is not universal and depends on quark geometry. The estimates of the ratio of the string breaking distance in the three quark system to that in the quark-antiquark system would range approximately from $frac{2}{3}$ to $1$. In addition, it is shown that there are special geometries which allow more than one breaking distance.
We use gauge/string duality to model a doubly heavy diquark in a color antitriplet moving in a thermal plasma at temperatures near the critical. With the assumption that there is no relative motion between the constituents, we calculate the drag force on the diquark. At high enough speed we find that diquark string configurations develop a cusp. In addition, we estimate the spatial string tension at non-zero baryon chemical potential, and also briefly discuss an extension to a triply heavy triquark in a color triplet.
We compute the electric dipole moment of nucleons in the large $N_c$ QCD model by Witten, Sakai and Sugimoto with $N_f=2$ degenerate massive flavors. Baryons in the model are instantonic solitons of an effective five-dimensional action describing the whole tower of mesonic fields. We find that the dipole electromagnetic form factor of the nucleons, induced by a finite topological $theta$ angle, exhibits complete vector meson dominance. We are able to evaluate the contribution of each vector meson to the final result - a small number of modes are relevant to obtain an accurate estimate. Extrapolating the model parameters to real QCD data, the neutron electric dipole moment is evaluated to be $d_n = 1.8 cdot 10^{-16}, theta;ecdot mathrm{cm}$. The electric dipole moment of the proton is exactly the opposite.
Using the gauge/string duality, we model a heavy quark-antiquark pair in a color singlet state moving through a cold medium and explore the consequences of temperature and velocity on string breaking. We show that the string breaking distance slowly varies with temperature and velocity away from the critical line but could fall near it.