arXiv subjects

Cristian Villavicencio

Publications and source records attributed to Cristian Villavicencio.

24 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

Metastable pions in dense media

We study the leptonic decay of charged pions in a compact star environment. Considering leptons as a degenerated Fermi system, pions are tightly constrained to decay into these particles because their Fermi levels are occupied. Thus, pion decay is only possible through thermal fluctuations. Under these circumstances, pion lifetime is larger and hence can be considered to reach a metastable state. We explore restrictions under which such a metastability is possible. We also study conditions under which pions and leptons already in chemical equilibrium can reach simultaneously the thermal equilibrium, and obtain the neutrino emissivity from metastable pions. Scenarios that favor this metastable state are protoneutron stars.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2015

Electric current generation in distorted graphene

Graphene-like materials can be effectively described by Quantum Electrodynamics in (2+1)-dimensions. In a pristine state, these systems exhibit a symmetry between the nonequivalent Dirac points in the honeycomb lattice. Realistic samples which include distortions and crystalline anisotropies are considered through mass gaps of topological and dynamical nature. In this work we show that the incorporation of an in-plane uniform external magnetic field on this pseudochiral asymmetric configuration generates a non-dissipative electric current aligned with the magnetic field: The pseudo chiral magnetic effect. This scenario resembles the chiral magnetic effect in Quantum Chromodynamics.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2015

Quark deconfinement and gluon condensate in a weak magnetic field

We study QCD finite energy sum rules (FESR) for the axial-vector current correlator in the presence of a magnetic field, in the weak field limit and at zero temperature. We find that the perturbative QCD as well as the hadronic contribution to the sum rules get explicit magnetic field-dependent corrections and that these in turn induce a magnetic field dependence on the deconfinement phenomenological parameter s_0 and on the gluon condensate. The leading corrections turn out to be quadratic in the field strength. We find from the dimension d=2 first FESR that the magnetic field dependence of s_0 is proportional to the absolute value of the light-quark condensate. Hence, it increases with increasing field strength. This implies that the parameters describing chiral symmetry restoration and deconfinement behave similarly as functions of the magnetic filed. Thus, at zero temperature the magnetic field is a catalysing agent of both chiral symmetry breaking and confinement. From the dimension d=4 second FESR we obtain the behavior of the gluon condensate in the presence of the external magnetic field. This condensate also increases with increasing field strength.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2014

Chiral transition with magnetic fields

We study the nature of the chiral transition for an effective theory with spontaneous breaking of symmetry, where charged bosons and fermions are subject to the effects of a constant external magnetic field. The problem is studied in terms of the relative intensity of the magnetic field with respect to the mass and the temperature. When the former is the smallest of the scales, we present a suitable method to obtain magnetic and thermal corrections up to ring order at high temperature. By these means, we solve the problem of the instability in the boson sector for these theories, where the squared masses, taken as functions of the order parameter, can vanish and even become negative. The solution is found by considering the screening properties of the plasma, encoded in the resummation of the ring diagrams at high temperature. We also study the case where the magnetic field is the intermediate of the three scales and explore the nature of the chiral transition as we vary the field strength, the coupling constants and the number of fermions. We show that the critical temperature for the restoration of chiral symmetry monotonically increases from small to intermediate values of the magnetic fields and that this temperature is always above the critical temperature for the case when the magnetic field is absent.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2013

Fermion Masses Through Condensation in Spacetimes with Torsion

In this paper we argue the possibility that fermion masses, in particular quarks, originate through the condensation of a fourth family that interacts with all of the quarks via a contact four-fermion term coming from the existence of torsion on the spacetime. Extra dimensions are considered to avoid the hierarchy problem.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2013

Phase diagram for charged scalars in a magnetic field at finite temperature

We investigate the nature of the phase transition for charged scalars in the presence of a magnetic background for a theory with spontaneous symmetry breaking. We perform a careful treatment of the negative mass squared as a function of the order parameter and present a suitable method to obtain magnetic and thermal corrections up to ring order for the high temperature limit and the case where the magnetic field strength is larger than the absolute value of the square of the mass parameter. We show that for a given value of the self-coupling, the phase transition is first order for a small magnetic field strength and becomes second order as this last grows. We also show that the critical temperature in the presence of the magnetic field is always below the critical temperature for the case where the field is absent.

hep-ph↗