arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to A. Rebhan.
We discuss the prospects for improving the precision on the hadronic corrections to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, and the plans of the Muon $g-2$ Theory Initiative to update the Standard Model prediction.
The low-energy light-by-light cross section as determined by the nonlinear Euler-Heisenberg QED Lagrangian is evaluated in the presence of constant magnetic fields in the center-of-mass system of the colliding photons. This cross section has a complicated dependence on directions and polarizations. The overall magnitude decreases as the magnetic field is increased from zero, but this trend is reversed for ultrastrong magnetic fields $B\gtrsim B_c$, where the cross section eventually grows quadratically with the magnetic field strength perpendicular to the collision axis. This effect is due to interactions involving the lowest Landau level of virtual Dirac particles; it is absent in scalar QED. An even more dramatic effect is found for virtual charged vector mesons where the one-loop cross section diverges at the critical field strength due to an instability of the lowest Landau level and the possibility of the formation of a superconducting vacuum state. We also discuss (the absence of) implications for the recent observation of light-by-light scattering in heavy-ion collisions.
The angular dependence of the differential cross section of unpolarized light-by-light scattering summed over final polarizations is the same in any low-energy effective theory of quantum electrodynamics and also in Born-Infeld electrodynamics. In this paper we derive general expressions for polarization-dependent low-energy scattering amplitudes, including a hypothetical parity-violating situation. These are evaluated for quantum electrodynamics with charged scalar or spinor particles, which give strikingly different polarization effects. Ordinary quantum electrodynamics is found to exhibit rather intricate polarization patterns for linear polarizations, whereas supersymmetric quantum electrodynamics and Born-Infeld electrodynamics give particularly simple forms.
The holographic Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto model is an almost parameter-free approximation to large-N QCD with chiral quarks that in a number of cases gives surprisingly good quantitative results for light meson physics. It also allows for predictions of the decay rates of glueballs into pseudoscalar and vector mesons through the coupling of modes on the flavor branes to the massive gravitational modes in the bulk. Including effects from finite quark masses leads to an enhancement of the decay of scalar glueballs into heavier pseudoscalars in good agreement with the decay pattern observed for the scalar glueball candidate f0(1710). Tensor glueballs are found to have a large width when their masses are above the 2 rho and 2 K* thresholds. With a mass as suggested by lattice gauge theory the lowest tensor glueball appears to be too broad to be observable, in contrast to the pseudoscalar glueball which may be a rather narrow state.
We present new results on the decay patterns of scalar and tensor glueballs in the top-down holographic Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto model. This model, which has only one free dimensionless parameter, gives semi-quantitative predictions for the vector meson spectrum, their decay widths, and also a gluon condensate in agreement with SVZ sum rules. The holographic predictions for scalar glueball decay rates are compared with experimental data for the widely discussed gluon candidates f0(1500) and f0(1710).
We consider 3+1-dimensional gauge theories at finite temperature and a finite density of charges which couple to a 2+1-dimensional Chern-Simons operator, giving rise to a theta-term with constant spatial gradient of theta. The strong-coupling limit of thermal N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory with this kind of anisotropic deformation has been used in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence as a model for strongly coupled anisotropic quark-gluon plasma. In this paper we work out the thermodynamics and the (nontrivial) phase diagram in the limit of vanishing gauge coupling and compare with the corresponding strong-coupling results.
In numerical simulations of nonabelian plasma instabilities in the hard-loop approximation, a turbulent spectrum has been observed that is characterized by a phase-space density of particles $n(p)\sim p^{-ν}$ with exponent $ν\simeq 2$, which is larger than expected from relativistic $2\leftrightarrow 2$ scatterings. Using the approach of Zakharov, L'vov and Falkovich, we analyse possible Kolmogorov coefficients for relativistic $(m \ge 4)$-particle processes, which give at most $ν=5/3$ perturbatively for an energy cascade. We discuss nonperturbative scenarios which lead to larger values. As an extreme limit we find the result $ν=5$ generically in an inherently nonperturbative effective field theory situation, which coincides with results obtained by Berges et al.\ in large-$N$ scalar field theory. If we instead assume that scaling behavior is determined by Schwinger-Dyson resummations such that the different scaling of bare and dressed vertices matters, we find that intermediate values are possible. We present one simple scenario which would single out $ν=2$.
We calculate anomaly induced conductivities from a holographic gauge theory model using Kubo formulas, making a clear conceptual distinction between thermodynamic state variables such as chemical potentials and external background fields. This allows us to pinpoint ambiguities in previous holographic calculations of the chiral magnetic conductivity. We also calculate the corresponding anomalous current three-point functions in special kinematic regimes. We compare the holographic results to weak coupling calculations using both dimensional regularization and cutoff regularization. In order to reproduce the weak coupling results it is necessary to allow for singular holographic gauge field configurations when a chiral chemical potential is introduced for a chiral charge defined through a gauge invariant but non-conserved chiral density. We argue that this is appropriate for actually addressing charge separation due to the chiral magnetic effect.
Using hard-loop (HL) effective theory for an anisotropic non-Abelian plasma, which even in the static limit involves nonvanishing HL vertices, we calculate the imaginary part of the static next-to-leading-order gluon self energy in the limit of a small anisotropy and with external momentum parallel to the anisotropy direction. At leading order, the static propagator has space-like poles corresponding to plasma instabilities. On the basis of a calculation using bare vertices, it has been conjectured that, at next-to-leading order, the static gluon self energy acquires an imaginary part which regulates these space-like poles. We find that the one-loop resummed expression taken over naively from the imaginary-time formalism does yield a nonvanishing imaginary part even after including all HL vertices. However, this result is not correct. Starting from the real-time formalism, which is required in a non-equilibrium situation, we construct a resummed retarded HL propagator with correct causality properties and show that the static limit of the retarded one-loop-resummed gluon self-energy is real. This result is also required for the time-ordered propagator to exist at next-to-leading order.
We review an alternative formulation of gauge field theories at finite temperature where unphysical degrees of freedom of gauge fields and the Faddeev-Popov ghosts are kept at zero temperature.
We review our work of the past decade on one-loop quantum corrections to the mass M and central charge Z of solitons in supersymmetric field theories: the kink, the vortex, and the monopoles (focussing on the kink and the monopoles here). In each case a new feature was needed to obtain BPS saturation: a new anomaly-like contribution to Z for the kink and the N=2 monopole, the effect of classical winding of the quantum vortex contributing to Z, surface terms contributing to M of the N=4 monopole and to Z of the N=2 and N=4 monopoles, and composite operator renormalization for the currents of the "finite" N=4 model. We use dimensional regularization, modified to preserve susy and be applicable to solitons, and suitable renormalization conditions. In the mode expansion of bosonic and fermionic quantum fields, zero modes appear then as massless nonzero modes.
The generalization of the hard thermal loop effective theory to anisotropic plasmas is described with a detailed discussion of anisotropic dispersion laws and plasma instabilities. The numerical results obtained in real-time lattice simulations of the hard loop effective theory are reviewed, both for the stationary anisotropic case and for a quark-gluon plasma undergoing boost-invariant expansion.
In this paper the structure of the next-to-leading (NLO) static gluon self energy for an anisotropic plasma is investigated in the limit of a small momentum space anisotropy. Using the Ward identities for the static hard-loop (HL) gluon polarization tensor and the (nontrivial) static HL vertices, we derive a comparatively compact form for the complete NLO correction to the structure function containing the space-like pole associated with magnetic instabilities. On the basis of a calculation without HL vertices, it has been conjectured that the imaginary part of this structure function is nonzero, rendering the space-like poles integrable. We show that there are both positive and negative contributions when HL vertices are included, highlighting the necessity of a complete numerical evaluation, for which the present work provides the basis.
We apply the previously proposed scheme of approximately self-consistent hard-thermal-loop resummations in the entropy of high-temperature QCD to N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills (SYM) theories and compare with a (uniquely determined) R[4,4] Padé approximant that interpolates accurately between the known perturbative result and the next-to-leading order strong-coupling result obtained from AdS/CFT correspondence. We find good agreement up to couplings where the entropy has dropped to about 85% of the Stefan-Boltzmann value. This is precisely the regime which in purely gluonic QCD corresponds to temperatures above 2.5 times the deconfinement temperature and for which this method of hard-thermal-loop resummation has given similar good agreement with lattice QCD results. This suggests that in this regime the entropy of both QCD and N=4 SYM is dominated by effectively weakly coupled hard-thermal-loop quasiparticle degrees of freedom. In N=4 SYM, strong-coupling contributions to the thermodynamic potential take over when the entropy drops below 85% of the Stefan-Boltzmann value.
We present a new method for the evaluation of the perturbative expansion of the QCD pressure which is valid at all values of the temperature and quark chemical potentials in the deconfined phase and which we work out up to and including order g^4 accuracy. Our calculation is manifestly four-dimensional and purely diagrammatic -- and thus independent of any effective theory descriptions of high temperature or high density QCD. In various limits, we recover the known results of dimensional reduction and the HDL and HTL resummation schemes, as well as the equation of state of zero-temperature quark matter, thereby verifying their respective validity. To demonstrate the overlap of the various regimes, we furthermore show how the predictions of dimensional reduction and HDL resummed perturbation theory agree in the regime T~\sqrt{g}*mu. At parametrically smaller temperatures T~g*mu, we find that the dimensional reduction result agrees well with those of the nonstatic resummations down to the remarkably low value T~0.2 m_D, where m_D is the Debye mass at T=0. Beyond this, we see that only the latter methods connect smoothly to the T=0 result of Freedman and McLerran, to which the leading small-T corrections are given by the so-called non-Fermi-liquid terms, first obtained through HDL resummations. Finally, we outline the extension of our method to the next order, where it would include terms for the low-temperature entropy and specific heats that are unknown at present.
We begin with the simplest possible introduction to supergravity. Then we discuss its spin 3/2 stress tensor; these results are new. Next, we discuss boundary conditions on fields and boundary actions for N=1 supergravity. Finally, we discuss new boundary contributions to the mass and central charge of monopoles in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory. All models are in 3+1 dimensions.
Quantum corrections to the magnetic central charge of the monopole in N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory are free from the anomalous contributions that were crucial for BPS saturation of the two-dimensional supersymmetric kink and the N=2 monopole. However these quantum corrections are nontrivial and they require infinite renormalization of the supersymmetry current, central charges, and energy-momentum tensor, in contrast to N=2 and even though the N=4 theory is finite. Their composite-operator renormalization leads to counterterms which form a multiplet of improvement terms. Using on-shell renormalization conditions the quantum corrections to the mass and the central charge then vanish both, thus verifying quantum BPS saturation.
We determine the dispersion relations of fermionic quasiparticles in ultradegenerate plasmas by a complete evaluation of the on-shell hard-dense-loop-resummed one-loop fermion self energy for momenta of the order of the Fermi momentum and above. In the case of zero temperature, we calculate the nonanalytic terms in the vicinity of the Fermi surface beyond the known logarithmic approximation, which turn out to involve fractional higher powers in the energy variable. For nonzero temperature (but much smaller than the chemical potential), we obtain the analogous expansion in closed form, which is then analytic but involves polylogarithms. These expansions are compared with a full numerical evaluation of the resulting group velocities and damping coefficients.