Chiral symmetry breaking and confinement: separating the scales

Abstract

We review arguments that chiral symmetry breaking is triggered when the quark bilinear condensate's dimension passes through one ($\gamma=1$). This is supported by gap equations and more recently holographic models. Confinement may then be a separate property of the pure Yang-Mills theory below the scale of the dynamically generated quark mass, occurring at the scale of the pole in the deep IR running. Here, we use perturbative results for the running of the gauge coupling and $\gamma$ in asymptotically free SU($N_c$) gauge theories with matter in higher dimension representations to seek the best candidate theories where confinement and chiral symmetry breaking can be maximally separated. For example, SU(2) gauge theory with a single Weyl quark in the $S_3$ (dimension 4) representation may have a factor of 20 separation in scale. Such a theory could be simulated on the lattice to test the separation. We also propose studying multi-representation theories where the higher dimension representation forms a condensate at one scale that can be quite separate from the condensation scale of the second representation matter. The confinement scale would presumably be below the second scale. For example, SU(3) gauge theory with a Weyl adjoint fermion and ten fundamental quarks may have a separation of a factor of 20 also.