arXiv subjects

Felipe J. Llanes-Estrada

Publications and source records attributed to Felipe J. Llanes-Estrada.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

arXiv2012

To what extent is Gluon Confinement an empirical fact?

Experimental verifications of Confinement in hadron physics have established the absence of charges with a fraction of the electron's charge by studying the energy deposited in ionization tracks at high energies, and performing Millikan experiments with charged droplets at rest. These experiments test only the absence of particles with fractional charge in the asymptotic spectrum, and thus "Quark" Confinement. However what theory suggests is that Color is confined, that is, all asymptotic particles are color singlets. Since QCD is a non-Abelian theory, the gluon force carriers (indirectly revealed in hadron jets) are colored. We empirically examine what can be said about Gluon Confinement based on the lack of detection of appropriate events, aiming at an upper bound for high-energy free-gluon production.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2012

Two infrared Yang-Mills solutions in stochastic quantization and in an effective action formalism

Three decades of work on the quantum field equations of pure Yang-Mills theory have distilled two families of solutions in Landau gauge. Both coincide for high (Euclidean) momentum with known perturbation theory, and both predict an infrared suppressed transverse gluon propagator, but whereas the solution known as "scaling" features an infrared power law for the gluon and ghost propagators, the "massive" solution rather describes the gluon as a vector boson that features a finite Debye screening mass. In this work we examine the gauge dependence of these solutions by adopting stochastic quantization. What we find, in four dimensions and in a rainbow approximation, is that stochastic quantization supports both solutions in Landau gauge but the scaling solution abruptly disappears when the parameter controlling the drift force is separated from zero (soft gauge-fixing), recovering only the perturbative propagators; the massive solution seems to survive the extension outside Landau gauge. These results are consistent with the scaling solution being related to the existence of a Gribov horizon, with the massive one being more general. We also examine the effective action in Faddeev-Popov quantization that generates the rainbow and we find, for a bare vertex approximation, that the the massive-type solutions minimise the quantum effective action.

hep-th↗

arXiv2011

A first estimate of triply heavy baryon masses from the pNRQCD perturbative static potential

Within pNRQCD we compute the masses of spin-averaged triply heavy baryons using the now-available NNLO pNRQCD potentials and three-body variational approach. We focus in particular on the role of the purely three-body interaction in perturbation theory. This we find to be reasonably small and of the order 25 MeV Our prediction for the Omega_ccc baryon mass is 4900(250) in keeping with other approaches. We propose to search for this hitherto unobserved state at B factories by examining the end point of the recoil spectrum against triple charm.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2011

Cubic neutrons

The neutron is largely spherical and incompressible in atomic nuclei. These two properties are however challenged in the extreme pressure environment of a neutron star. Our variational computation within the Cornell model of Coulomb gauge QCD shows that the neutron (and also the Delta-3/2 baryon) can adopt cubic symmetry at an energy cost of about 150 MeV. Balancing this with the free energy gained by tighter neutron packing, we expose the possible softening of the equation of state of neutron matter.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2011

The existence of a two-solar mass neutron star constrains the gravitational constant G_N at strong field

In General Relativity there is a maximum mass allowed for neutron stars that, if exceeded, entails their collapse into a black hole. Its precise value depends on details of the nuclear matter equation of state about which we are much more certain thanks to recent progress in low-energy effective theories. The discovery of a two-solar mass neutron star, near that maximum mass, when analyzed with modern equations of state, implies that Newton's gravitational constant in the star cannot exceed its value on Earth by more than 8% at 95% confidence level. This is a remarkable leap of ten orders of magnitude in the gravitational field intensity at which the constant has been constrained.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2011

Bragg diffraction and the Iron crust of cold Neutron Stars

If cooled-down neutron stars have a thin atomic crystalline-iron crust, they must diffract X-rays of appropriate wavelength. If the diffracted beam is to be visible from Earth, the illuminating source must be very intense and near the reflecting star. An example is a binary system composed of two neutron stars in close orbit, one of them inert, the other an X-ray pulsar (perhaps an "anomalous" X-ray pulsar or magnetar, not powered by gas absorption from the companion or surrounding space, would be the cleanest example). The observable to be searched for is a secondary peak added (quasi-) periodically to the main X-ray pulse. The distinguishing feature of this secondary peak is that it appears at wavelengths related by simple integer numbers, lambda, lambda/2, lambda/3... lambda/n because of Bragg's diffraction law.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2011

Bulk viscosity and energy-momentum correlations in high energy hadron collisions

We show how the measurement of appropriately constructed particle-energy/momentum correlations allows access to the bulk viscosity of strongly interacting hadron matter in heavy ion collisions. This measurement can be performed by the LHC and RHIC experiments in events with high-particle multiplicity, following up on existing estimates of the shear viscosity based on elliptic flow.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2011

Charm diffusion in a pion gas implementing unitarity, chiral and heavy quark symmetries

We compute the charm drag and diffusion coefficients in a hot pion gas, such as is formed in a Heavy Ion Collision after the system cools sufficiently to transit into the hadron phase. We fully exploit Heavy Quark Effective Theory (with both D and D* mesons as elementary degrees of freedom during the collision) and Chiral Perturbation Theory, and employ standard unitarization to reach higher temperatures. We find that a certain friction and shear diffusion coefficients are almost p-independent at fixed temperature which simplifies phenomenological analysis. At the higher end of reliability of our calculation, T about 150 MeV, we report a charm relaxation length of some 40 fm, in agreement with the model estimate of He, Fries and Rapp. The momentum of a 1-GeV charm quark decreases about 50 MeV per Fermi when crossing the hadron phase.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2011

Bulk viscosity of low-temperature strongly interacting matter

We study the bulk viscosity of a pion gas in unitarized Chiral Perturbation Theory at low and moderate temperatures, below any phase transition to a quark-gluon plasma phase. We argue that inelastic processes are irrelevant and exponentially suppressed at low temperatures. Since the system falls out of chemical equilibrium upon expansion,a pion chemical potential must be introduced, so we extend the existing theory to include it. We control the zero modes of the collision operator and Landau's conditions of fit when solving the Boltzmann equation with the elastic collision kernel. The dependence of the bulk viscosity with temperature is reminiscent of the findings of Fernandez-Fraile and Gomez Nicola, while the numerical value is closer to that of Davesne. In the zero-temperature limit we correctly recover the vanishing viscosity associated to a non-relativistic monoatomic gas.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2011

Fock space expansion of sigma meson in leading-Nc

We examine the leading-Nc behavior of the masses and transition matrix elements of some low-lying, few-particle configurations in QCD. A truncation of the Fock space produces an effective, symmetric Hamiltonian that we diagonalize. The lowest eigenvalue is identified as the sigma meson if the Hamiltonian is chosen to represent the scalar sector. As an application, the coefficients of the Nc powers are then fit to two-loop Unitarized SU(2) Chiral Perturbation Theory results for the sigma mass and width as a function of the number of colors, and we show that those results can be accommodated using the QCD Nc dependence previously derived for matrix elements, without the need for unnatural parameters or fine tunings. Finally, we show a very preliminary good quality fit, estimating the proportion of tetraquark/molecule-like (dominant), q-anti-q-like (subdominant) and exotic-like (marginal) configurations in the sigma.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2010

Coulomb Gauge Model for Exotic Hadrons

Hadron structure advances provided by the Coulomb gauge model are summarized. Highlights include a realistic description of the vacuum and meson spectrum with chiral symmetry and dynamical flavor mixing, accurate hyperfine splittings for light and heavy systems, glueball and hybrid meson predictions in agreement with lattice QCD, and tetraquark results providing an understanding of the observed pi_1(1400) having unconventional quantum numbers.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2010

Coulomb Gauge QCD and the Excited Hadron Spectrum

We discuss progress in understanding the light and heavy quark excited hadron spectrum from Coulomb gauge QCD. For light quark systems we highlight the insensitivity to spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking, which predicts Wigner parity-degeneracy in the highly excited hadron spectrum and allows the quark mass momentum dependence to be experimentally probed. For heavy quark meson decays we invoke the Franck-Condon principle, a consequence of small velocity changes for heavy quarks, to extract qualitative, but model independent, structure insight from the momentum distribution of the decay products.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2010

Brief introduction to viscosity in hadron physics

We introduce the concept of viscosity (both shear and bulk) in the context of hadron physics and in particular the meson gas, highlighting the current theoretical efforts to connect possible measurements of the viscosities to underlying physics such as a phase transition or the trace anomaly.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2010

Viscosity near phase transitions

Probably the most enticing observation in theoretical physics during the last decade was the discovery of the great amount of consequences obtained from the AdS/CFT conjecture put forward by Maldacena. In this work we review how this correspondence can be used to address hydrodynamic properties such as the viscosity of some strongly interacting systems. We also employ the Boltzmann equation for those systems closer to low-energy QCD, and argue that this kind of transport coefficients can be related to phase transitions, in particular the QGP/hadronic phase transition studied in heavy ion collisions.

hep-th↗

arXiv2010

Coulomb gauge QCD as a tool for the excited spectrum

A distinct feature of Coulomb gauge QCD is that it can be formulated in terms of physical, transverse gluons and quarks alone. The state-counting is then transparent, and the gauge is suited for studies of the excited spectrum. Leaving aside exotic spectroscopy, which has been the subject of other publications, in this note I call attention on two recent applications. One is that the running quark mass in the mid-infrared can be probed from excited baryons thanks to parity doubling, a consequence of insensitivity to chiral symmetry breaking. Fast quarks are asymptotically free and behave as massless, so hadrons containing fast quarks decouple from the condensate. Their (power-law) rate of decoupling reflects on the rate of decreasing parity splittings, which can be measured. The second is that, in analogy with the Franck-Condon principle of molecular physics, the velocity distribution of the heavy quarks inside a heavy hadron can be mapped out by the velocity distribution of its open-flavor decay products. This is exemplified by recent data from the Belle collaboration taken at the Upsilon(10860).

nucl-th↗

arXiv2010

Heavy Quark Fluorescence

Heavy hadrons containing heavy quarks (for example, Upsilon-mesons) feature a scale separation between the heavy quark mass (about 4.5 GeV for the b-quark) and the QCD scale (about 0.3 GeV}) that controls effective masses of lighter constituents. Therefore, as in ordinary molecules, the de-excitation of the lighter, faster degrees of freedom leaves the velocity distribution of the heavy quarks unchanged, populating the available decay channels in qualitatively predictable ways. Automatically an application of the Franck-Condon principle of molecular physics explains several puzzling results of Upsilon(5S) decays as measured by the Belle collaboration, such as the high rate of Bs*-anti Bs* versus Bs*-anti Bs production, the strength of three-body B-anti B + pion decays, or the dip in B momentum shown in these decays. We argue that the data is showing the first Sturm-Liouville zero of the Upsilon(5S) quantum mechanical squared wavefunction, and providing evidence for a largely b-anti b composition of this meson.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2010

Boost operators in Coulomb-gauge QCD: the pion form factor and Fock expansions in phi radiative decays

In this article we rederive the Boost operators in Coulomb-Gauge Yang-Mills theory employing the path-integral formalism and write down the complete operators for QCD. We immediately apply them to note that what are usually called the pion square, quartic... charge radii, defined from derivatives of the pion form factor at zero squared momentum transfer, are completely blurred out by relativistic and interaction corrections, so that it is not clear at all how to interpret these quantities in terms of the pion charge distribution. The form factor therefore measures matrix elements of powers of the QCD boost and Moeller operators, weighted by the charge density in the target's rest frame. In addition we remark that the decomposition of the eta' wavefunction in quarkonium, gluonium, ... components attempted by the KLOE collaboration combining data from phi radiative decays, requires corrections due to the velocity of the final state meson recoiling against a photon. This will be especially important if such decompositions are to be attempted with data from J/psi decays.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2010

Using highly excited baryons to catch the quark mass

Chiral symmetry in QCD can be simultaneously in Wigner and Goldstone modes, depending on the part of the spectrum examined. The transition regime between both, exploiting for example the onset of parity doubling in the high baryon spectrum, can be used to probe the running quark mass in the mid-IR power-law regime. In passing we also argue that three-quark states naturally group into same-flavor quartets, split into two parity doublets, all splittings decreasing high in the spectrum. We propose that a measurement of masses of high-partial wave Delta* resonances should be sufficient to unambiguously establish the approximate degeneracy and see the quark mass running. We test these concepts with the first computation of the spectrum of high-J excited baryons in a chiral-invariant quark model.

hep-ph↗