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.
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 enha
ncement of baryon production in strong decays of heavy mesons in dense baryonic medium.
Heavy quark transport coefficients in a strongly coupled Quark-Gluon Plasma can be evaluated using a gauge/string duality and lattice QCD. Via this duality, one can argue that for low momenta the drag coefficient for heavy quarks is proportional to t
he spatial string tension. Such a tension is well studied on the lattice that allows one to straightforwardly make non-perturbative estimates of the heavy quark diffusion coefficients near the critical point. The obtained results are consistent with those in the literature.
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.
Renormalization group evolution of QCD composite light-cone operators, built from two and more quark and gluon fields, is responsible for the logarithmic scaling violations in diverse physical observables. We analyze spectra of anomalous dimensions o
f these operators at large conformal spins at weak and strong coupling with the emphasis on the emergence of a dual string picture. The multi-particle spectrum at weak coupling has a hidden symmetry due to integrability of the underlying dilatation operator which drives the evolution. In perturbative regime, we demonstrate the equivalence of the one-loop cusp anomaly to the disk partition function in two-dimensional Yang-Mills theory which admits a string representation. The strong coupling regime for anomalous dimensions is discussed within the two pictures addressed recently, -- minimal surfaces of open strings and rotating long closed strings in AdS background. In the latter case we find that the integrability implies the presence of extra degrees of freedom -- the string junctions. We demonstrate how the analysis of their equations of motion naturally agrees with the spectrum found at weak coupling.