arXiv subjects

Aleksey Cherman

Publications and source records attributed to Aleksey Cherman.

66 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2009

Color Superconductivity at Large N: A New Hope

At zero density, the `t Hooft large N_c limit often provides some very useful qualitative insights into the non-perturbative physics of QCD. However, it is known that at high densities the `t Hooft large N_c world looks very different from the N_c=3 world, which is believed to be in a color superconducting phase at high densities. At large N_c, on the other hand, the DGR instability causes a chiral-density wave phase to dominate over the color superconducting phase. There is an alternative large N_c limit, with the quarks transforming in the two-index antisymmetric representation of the gauge group, which at N_c=3 reduces to QCD but looks quite different at large N_c. We show that in this alternative large N_c limit, the DGR instability does not occur, so that it may be plausible that the ground state of high-density quark matter is a color superconductor even when N_c is large. This revives the hope that a large N_c approximation might be useful for getting some insights into the high-density phenomenology of QCD.

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arXiv2009

Can fermions save large N dimensional reduction?

This paper explores whether Eguchi-Kawai reduction for gauge theories with adjoint fermions is valid. The Eguchi-Kawai reduction relates gauge theories in different numbers of dimensions in the large $N$ limit provided that certain conditions are met. In principle, this relation opens up the possibility of learning about the dynamics of 4D gauge theories through techniques only available in lower dimensions. Dimensional reduction can be understood as a special case of large $N$ equivalence between theories related by an orbifold projection. In this work, we focus on the simplest case of dimensional reduction, relating a 4D gauge theory to a 3D gauge theory via an orbifold projection. A necessary condition for the large N equivalence between the 4D and 3D theories to hold is that certain discrete symmetries in the two theories must not be broken spontaneously. In pure 4D Yang-Mills theory, these symmetries break spontaneously as the size of one of the spacetime dimensions shrinks. An analysis of the effect of adjoint fermions on the relevant symmetries of the 4D theory shows that the fermions help stabilize the symmetries. We consider the same problem from the point of view of the lower dimensional 3D theory and find that, surprisingly, adjoint fermions are not generally enough to stabilize the necessary symmetries of the 3D theory. In fact, a rich phase diagram arises, with a complicated pattern of symmetry breaking. We discuss the possible causes and consequences of this finding.

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arXiv2009

All you need is N: Baryon spectroscopy in two large N limits

The generalization of QCD to many colors is not unique; each distinct choice corresponds to a distinct 1/N_c expansion. The familiar 't Hooft N_c -> \infty limit places quarks in the fundamental representation of SU(N_c), while an alternative approach places quarks in its two-index antisymmetric representation. At N_c=3 these two 1/N_c expansions coincide. We compare their predictions for certain observables in baryon spectroscopy, particularly mass combinations organized according to SU(3) flavor breaking. Each large N_c limit generates an emergent spin-flavor symmetry that leads to the vanishing of particular linear combinations of baryon masses at specific orders in the expansions. Experimental evidence shows that these relations hold at the expected orders regardless of which large N_c limit one uses, suggesting the validity of either limit in the study of baryons. We also consider a hybrid large N_c limit in which one flavor is taken to transform in the two-index antisymmetric representation and the rest of the flavors are in the fundamental representation. While this hybrid large N_c limit is theoretically attractive, we show that for a wide class of observables it faces some phenomenological difficulties.

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arXiv2009

Universal relations of transport coefficients from holography

We show that there are universal high-temperature relations for transport coefficients of plasmas described by a wide class of field theories with gravity duals. These theories can be viewed as strongly coupled large-Nc conformal field theories deformed by one or more relevant operators. The transport coefficients we study are the speed of sound and bulk viscosity, as well as the conductivity, diffusion coefficient, and charge susceptibility of probe U(1) charges. We show that the sound bound v_s^2 <= 1/3 is satisfied at high temperatures in these theories and also discuss bounds on the diffusion coefficient, the conductivity and the bulk viscosity.

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arXiv2009

A bound on the speed of sound from holography

We show that the squared speed of sound v_{s}^{2} is bounded from above at high temperatures by the conformal value of 1/3 in a class of strongly coupled four-dimensional field theories, given some mild technical assumptions. This class consists of field theories that have gravity duals sourced by a single scalar field. There are no known examples to date of field theories with gravity duals for which v_{s}^{2} exceeds 1/3 in energetically favored configurations. We conjecture that v_{s}^{2}=1/3 represents an upper bound for a broad class of four-dimensional theories.

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arXiv2009

Model Independent Tests of Skyrmions and Their Holographic Cousins

We describe a new exact relation for large $N_c$ QCD for the long-distance behavior of baryon form factors in the chiral limit. This model-independent relation is used to test the consistency of the structure of several baryon models. All 4D semiclassical chiral soliton models satisfy the relation, as does the Pomarol-Wulzer holographic model of baryons as 5D Skyrmions. However, remarkably, we find that the holographic model treating baryons as instantons in the Sakai-Sugimoto model does not satisfy the relation.

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arXiv2007

A sticky business: the status of the conjectured viscosity/entropy density bound

There have been a number of forms of a conjecture that there is a universal lower bound on the ratio, eta/s, of the shear viscosity, eta, to entropy density, s, with several different domains of validity. We examine the various forms of the conjecture. We argue that a number of variants of the conjecture are not viable due to the existence of theoretically consistent counterexamples. We also note that much of the evidence in favor of a bound does not apply to the variants which have not yet been ruled out.

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arXiv2007

Strange results from chiral soliton models

The standard collective quantization treatment of the strangeness content of the nucleon in chiral soliton models such as the Skyrmion is shown to be inconsistent with the semi-classical expansion on which the treatment is based. The strangeness content vanishes at leading order in the semi-classical expansion. Collective quantization correctly describes some contributions to the strangeness content at the first nonvanishing order in the expansion, but neglects others at the same order--namely, those associated with continuum modes. Moreover, there are fundamental difficulties in computing at a constant order in the expansion due to the non-renormalizable nature of chiral soliton models. Moreover, there are fundamental difficulties in computing at a constant order in the expansion due to the non-renormalizable nature of chiral soliton models and the absence of any viable power counting scheme. We show that the continuum mode contribution to the strangeness diverges, and as a result the computation of the strangeness content at leading non-vanishing order is not a well-posed mathematical problem in these models.

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arXiv2006

A tale of two skyrmions: the nucleon's strange quark content in different large N_c limits

The nucleon's strange quark content comes from closed quark loops, and hence should vanish at leading order in the traditional large $N_c$ (TLNC) limit. Quark loops are not suppressed in the recently proposed orientifold large $N_c$ (OLNC) limit, and thus the strange quark content should be non-vanishing at leading order. The Skyrme model is supposed to encode the large $N_c$ behavior of baryons, and can be formulated for both of these large $N_c$ limits. There is an apparent paradox associated with the large $N_c$ behavior of strange quark matrix elements in the Skyrme model. The model only distinguishes between the two large $N_c$ limits via the $N_c$ scaling of the couplings and the Witten-Wess-Zumino term, so that a vanishing leading order strange matrix element in the TLNC limit implies that it also vanishes at leading order in the OLNC limit, contrary to the expectations based on the suppression/non-suppression of quark loops. The resolution of this paradox is that the Skyrme model does not include the most general type of meson-meson interaction and, in fact, contains no meson-meson interactions which vanish for the TLNC limit but not the OLNC. The inclusion of such terms in the model yields the expected scaling for strange quark matrix elements.

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arXiv2006

The Skyrmion strikes back: baryons and a new large $N_c$ limit

In the large $N_c$ limit of QCD, baryons can be modeled as solitons, for instance, as Skyrmions. This modeling has been justified by Witten's demonstration that all properties of baryons and mesons scale with $N_c^{-1/2}$ in the same way as the analogous meson-based soliton model scales with a generic meson-meson coupling constant $g$. An alternative large $N_c$ limit (the orientifold large $N_c$ limit) has recently been proposed in which quarks transform in the two-index antisymmetric representation of $SU(N_c)$. By carrying out the analog of Witten's analysis for the new orientifold large $N_c$ limit, we show that baryons and solitons can also be identified in the orientifold large $N_c$ limit. However, in the orientifold large $N_c$ limit, the interaction amplitudes and matrix elements scale with $N_c^{-1}$ in the same way as soliton models scale with the generic meson coupling constant $g$ rather than as $N_c^{-1/2}$ as in the traditional large $N_c$ limit.

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arXiv2005

The collective quantization of three-flavored Skyrmions revisited

A self-consistent large $N_c$ approach is developed for the collective quantization of SU(3) flavor hedgehog solitons, such as the Skyrmion. The key to this analysis is the determination of all of the zero modes associated with small fluctuations around the hedgehog. These are used in the conventional way to construct collective coordinates. This approach differs from previous work in that it does not implicitly assume that each static zero mode is associated with a dynamical zero mode. It is demonstrated explicitly in the context of the Skyrmion that there are fewer dynamical zero modes than static ones due to the Witten-Wess-Zumino term in the action. Group-theoretic methods are employed to identify the physical states resulting from canonical quantization of the collectively rotating soliton. The collective states fall into representations of SU(3) flavor labeled by $(p,q)$ and are given by $(2J, \frac{Nc}{2} -J)$ where $J={1/2},{3/2},... $ is the spin of the collective state. States with strangeness $S > 0$ do not arise as collective states from this procedure; thus the $θ^{+}$ (pentaquark) resonance does not arise as a collective excitation in models of this type.

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arXiv2004

The quantization of exotic states in SU(3) soliton models: A solvable quantum mechanical analog

The distinction between the rigid rotor and Callan-Klebanov approaches to the quantization of SU(3) solitons is considered in the context of exotic baryons. A numerically tractable quantum mechanical analog system is introduced to test the reliability of the two quantization schemes. We find that in the equivalent of the large N_c limit of QCD, the Callan-Klebanov approach agrees with a numerical solution of the quantum mechanical analog. Rigid rotor quantization generally does not. The implications for exotic baryons are briefly discussed.

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