Chiral condensates for neutron stars in hadron-quark crossover: from a parity doublet nucleon model to an NJL quark model

We study the chiral condensates in neutron star matter from nuclear to quark matter domain. We describe nuclear matter with a parity doublet model (PDM), quark matter with the Nambu--Jona-Lasino (NJL) model, and a matter at the intermediate density by interpolating nuclear and quark matter equations of state. The model parameters are constrained by nuclear physics and neutron star observations. Various condensates in the interpolated domain are estimated from the chemical potential dependence of the condensates at the boundaries of the interpolation. The use of the PDM with substantial chiral invariant mass ($m_0 gtrsim 500$ MeV, which is favored by the neutron star observations) predicts the mild chiral restoration, and the significant chiral condensate remains to baryon density $n_B sim 2-3n_0$ ($n_0simeq 0.16,{rm fm}^{-3}$: nuclear saturation density), smoothly approaching the NJL predictions for the color-flavor-locked phase at $n_B gtrsim 5n_0$. The same method is applied to estimate diquark condensates, number densities of up-, down- and strange-quarks, and the lepton fraction. In our descriptions the chiral restoration in the interpolated domain proceeds with two conceptually distinct chiral restoration effects; the first is associated with the positive scalar density in a nucleon, relevant in dilute regime, and the other primarily arises from the modification of the quark Dirac sea, which is triggered by the growth of the quark Fermi sea. We discuss several qualitative conjectures to interpolate the microphysics in nuclear and quark matter.

Doubly Heavy Tetraquark Resonant States

Spectrum of the doubly heavy tetraquarks, $bbbar qbar q$, is studied in a constituent quark model. Four-body problem is solved in a variational method where the real scaling technique is used to identify resonant states above the fall-apart decay thresholds. In addition to the two bound states that were reported in the previous study we have found several narrow resonant states above the $BB^*$ and $B^*B^*$ thresholds. Their structures are studied and are interpreted by the quark dynamics. A narrow resonance with spin-parity $J^P=1^+$ is found to be a mixed state of a compact tetraquark and a $B^*B^*$ scattering state. This is driven by a strong color Coulombic attraction between the $bb$ quarks. Negative-parity excited resonances with $J^P=0^-$, $1^-$ and $2^-$ form a triplet under the heavy-quark spin symmetry. It turns out that they share a similar structure to the $lambda$-mode of a singly heavy baryon as a result of the strongly attractive correlation for the doubly heavy diquark.

Quark-hadron crossover equations of state for neutron stars: constraining the chiral invariant mass in a parity doublet model

We construct an equation of state (EOS) for neutron stars by interpolating hadronic EOS at low density and quark EOS at high density. A hadronic model based on the parity doublet structure is used for hadronic matter and a quark model of Nambu--Jona-Lasinio type is for quark matter. We assume crossover between hadronic matter and quark matter in the the color-flavor locked phase. The nucleon mass of the parity doublet model has a mass associated with the chiral symmetry breaking, and a chiral invariant mass $m_0$ which is insensitive to the chiral condensate. The value of $m_0$ affects the nuclear EOSs at low density, and has strong correlations with the radii of neutron stars. Using the constraint to the radius obtained by LIGO-Virgo and NICER, we find that $m_0$ is restricted as $600,mathrm{MeV}lesssim m_0 lesssim 900,mathrm{MeV}$.

Suppression of decay widths in singly heavy baryons induced by the $U_A (1)$ anomaly

We study strong and radiative decays of excited singly heavy baryons (SHBs) using an effective chiral Lagrangian based on the diquark picture proposed in Ref. [1]. The effective Lagrangian contains a $U_A (1)$ anomaly term, which induces an inverse mass ordering between strange and non-strange SHBs with spin-parity $1/2^-$. We find that the effect of the $U_A (1)$ anomaly combined with flavor-symmetry breaking modifies the Goldberger-Treiman relation for the mass difference between the ground state $Lambda_Q (1/2^+)$ and its chiral partner $Lambda_Q (1/2^-)$, and $Lambda_Q (1/2^-) Lambda_Q (1/2^+) eta$ coupling, which results in suppression of the decay width of $Lambda_Q (1/2^-) to Lambda_Q (1/2^+) eta$. We also investigate the other various decays such as $Lambda_Q (1/2^-) to Sigma_Q (1/2^+, , 3/2^+) pi pi$, $Lambda_Q (1/2^-) to Sigma_Q (1/2^+) pi$, $Lambda_Q (1/2^-) to Sigma_Q (1/2^+, , 3/2^+) gamma$, and $Lambda_Q (1/2^-) to Lambda_Q (1/2^+) pi^0$ for wide range of mass of $Lambda_Q (1/2^-)$.

QCD vacuum and baryon masses

We propose a novel approach to study a possible role of the quantum chromodynamics vacuum in nuclear and hadron physics. Our proposal is essentially to introduce a candidate of the QCD vacuum through a gluon background field and calculate physical quantities as a function of the background field. In the present work we adopt the Copenhagen (spaghetti) vacuum. As a first application of the our approach, we investigate the effects of the Copenhagen vacuum on the ground-state baryon masses. We find that the baryon mass does depend on a parameter that characterizes the Copenhagen vacuum and satisfies the Gell-Mann-Okubo mass relation for the baryon octet. We also estimate the value of the parameter and discuss the chiral invariant nucleon mass in our framework.

Chiral effective theory of diquarks and the U_A(1) anomaly

The diquark is a strongly correlated quark pair that plays an important role in hadrons and hadronic matter. In order to treat the diquak as a building block of hadrons, we formulate an effective theory of diquark fields with $SU(3)_R times SU(3)_L$ chiral symmetry. We concentrate on the scalar ($0^+$) and pseudoscalar ($0^-$) diquarks and construct a linear-sigma-model Lagrangian. It is found that the effective Lagrangian contains a new type of chirally symmetric meson-diquark-diquark coupling that breaks axial $U_A(1)$ symmetry. We discuss consequences of the $U_A(1)$ anomaly term to the diquark masses as well as to the singly heavy baryon spectrum, which is directly related to the diquark spectrum. We find an inverse mass ordering between strange and nonstrange diquarks. The parameters of the effective theory can be determined by the help of lattice QCD calculations of diquarks and also from the mass spectrum of the singly heavy baryons. We determine the strength of the $U_A(1)$ anomaly term, which is found to give a significant portion of the diquark masses.

Inverse Mass Hierarchy of Light Scalar Mesons Driven by Anomaly-Induced Flavor Breaking

We propose a novel mechanism to reproduce the observed mass hierarchy for the scalar mesons lighter than 1 GeV (called the inverse hierarchy) regarding them as mesons made of a quark and an anti-quark ($qbar{q}$ mesons). The source is provided by the SU(3)-flavor symmetry-breaking induced by U(1) axial anomaly. In particular, the anomaly term including the explicit-chiral symmetry-breaking plays a significant role for the light scalar meson spectrum. To be concrete, we construct a linear sigma model for the scalar mesons of $qbar{q}$ type together with their pseudoscalar chiral partners, including an anomaly-induced explicit-chiral symmetry-breaking term. We find that, due to the proposed mechanism, the inverse hierarchy, i.e., $mleft[ a_0 (980) right] simeq mleft[ f_0 (980) right] > m left[ K_0^ast (700) right] > m left[ f_0(500) right]$ is indeed realized. Consequently, the quark content of $f_0 (500)$ is dominated by the isoscalar $bar uu+ bar dd$ component, and $f_0 (980)$ is by the strange quark bilinears, $sbar{s}$.

Heavy quark spin multiplet structure of $P_c(4312)$, $P_c(4440)$, and $P_c(4457)$

Very recently, the LHCb collaboration has reported the new result about the hidden-charm pentaquarks: $P_c(4312)$ near the $bar{D}Sigma_c$ threshold, and $P_c(4440)$ and $P_c(4457)$ near $bar{D}^*Sigma_c$ threshold. We study the heavy quark spin (HQS) multiplet structures of these newly $P_c$ pentaquarks under the heavy quark spin symmetry based on the hadronic molecular picture. We point out that $P_c(4312)$ is the $J^P = 1/2^-$ member of an HQS triplet, and $P_c(4440)$ and $P_c(4457)$ are the $J^P = 3/2^-$ member of the HQS triplet and an HQS singlet with $J^P = 3/2^-$. Namely, the $P_c(4312)$ and one of $P_c(4440)$ and $P_c(4457)$ belong to an HQS triplet. The HQS multiplet structure predicts the existence of $J^P = 5/2^-$ state near $bar{D}^astSigma_c^ast$ threshold.

Single heavy baryons with chiral partner structure in a three-flavor chiral model

We construct an effective hadronic model including single heavy baryons (SHBs) belonging to the $(mathbf{3},mathbf{3})$ representation under $mbox{SU}(3)_L times mbox{SU}(3)_R$ symmetry, respecting the chiral symmetry and heavy-qaurk spin-flavor symmetry. When the chiral symmetry is spontaneously broken, the SHBs are divided into the baryons with negative parity of $bar{mathbf 3}$ representation under $mbox{SU}(3)$ flavor symmetry which is the chiral partners to the ones with positive parity of ${mathbf 6}$ representation. We determine the model parameters from the available experimental data for the masses and strong decay widths of $Sigma_c^{(ast)}$, $Lambda_c (2595)$, $Xi_c (2790)$, and $Xi_c (2815)$. Then, we predict the masses and strong decay widths of other baryons including $Xi_b$ with negative parity. We also study radiative decays of SHBs including $Omega_c^ast$ and $Omega_b^ast$ with positive parity.

Heavy quark spin multiplet structure of $P_c$-like pentaquark as P-wave hadronic molecular state

We study the heavy quark spin (HQS) multiplet structure of P-wave $Qbar{Q}qqq$-type pentaquarks treated as molecules of a heavy meson and a heavy baryon. We define the light-cloud spin (LCS) basis decomposing the meson-baryon spin wavefunction into the LCS and HQS parts. Introducing the LCS basis, we find HQS multiplets classified by the LCS; five HQS singlets, two HQS doublets, and three HQS triplets. We construct the one-pion exchange potential respecting the heavy quark spin and chiral symmetries to demonstrate which HQS multiplets are realized as a bound state. By solving the coupled channel Schrodinger equations, we study the heavy meson-baryon systems with $I=1/2$ and $J^P=(1/2^+, 3/2^+, 5/2^+, 7/2^+)$. The bound states which have same LCS structure are degenerate at the heavy quark limit, and the degeneracy is resolved for finite mass. This HQS multiplet structure will be measured in the future experiments.