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Kazunori Itakura

Publications and source records attributed to Kazunori Itakura.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

Polarized quantum effects in countable signals from intense laser - electron beam interactions

We investigate the feasibility of precision counting experiments based on laser-electron beam interactions to verify strong-field quantum electrodynamic effects, with particular emphasis on the stochastic nature of photon emission, photon polarization, and spin asymmetry. A precise Monte-Carlo model is developed using photon packets with multi-dimensional phase-space weighting, hierarchical-mesh cumulative distribution functions, and a variable time-step method. This model quantitatively reproduces the highest edge of the photon energy spectrum and the positron yield in the previous SLAC E-144 experiment. The quantized radiation back-reaction determines the highest edge tail and thus the positron yield for higher laser intensities. The spin asymmetry in photon emission and spin flip determines photon polarization in the high-energy tail, while that in pair production can be observed through the large-angle positron scattering. Our simulations predict that these effects depend on the combination of the electron-beam energy and the laser intensity, and that they could be verified in future ELI-NP experiments using sub-GeV electron beams and optical lasers with intensities ~10^22W/cm2.

physics.plasm-ph↗
arXiv2026

Forward hadron production in pp collisions at LHC energies from an event generator based on the color glass condensate framework

We investigate inclusive forward single-hadron production in high-energy proton--proton collisions using a CGC-inspired Monte Carlo event generator, MC-CGC. We carried out a systematic study of the sensitivity of the running-coupling Balitsky-Kovchegov (rcBK) evolution equation to its initial conditions by comparing three parameterizations: the McLerran-Venugopalan (MV) model and its two HERA DIS-constrained variants, MV$^γ$ and MV$^e$. Our results indicate that the current LHCb data favor the MV$^γ$ and MV$^e$ models, while the differences from the original MV model become more pronounced at higher transverse momentum and at mid-rapidity. As a complementary analysis, we also compared the dilute-dense (DHJ factorization) and dense-dense ($k_T$ factorization) frameworks. We found that the $k_T$ factorization framework provides a better description of the particle production spectra at mid-rapidity than the DHJ framework, where both the projectile and target are in the dense regime at LHC energies. Predictions for the FoCal measurements at ALICE, including the production of identified neutral mesons and jets, are also presented.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2023

Strong-Field Physics in QED and QCD: From Fundamentals to Applications

We provide a pedagogical review article on fundamentals and applications of the quantum dynamics in strong electromagnetic fields in QED and QCD. The fundamentals include the basic picture of the Landau quantization and the resummation techniques applied to the class of higher-order diagrams that are enhanced by large magnitudes of the external fields. We then discuss observable effects of the vacuum fluctuations in the presence of the strong fields, which consist of the interdisciplinary research field of nonlinear QED. We also discuss extensions of the Heisenberg-Euler effective theory to finite temperature/density and to non-Abelian theories with some applications. Next, we proceed to the paradigm of the dimensional reduction emerging in the low-energy dynamics in the strong magnetic fields. The mechanisms of superconductivity, the magnetic catalysis of the chiral symmetry breaking, and the Kondo effect are addressed from a unified point of view in terms of the renormalization-group method. We provide an up-to-date summary of the lattice QCD simulations in magnetic fields for the chiral symmetry breaking and the related topics as of the end of 2022. Finally, we discuss novel transport phenomena induced by chiral anomaly and the axial-charge dynamics. Those discussions are supported by a number of appendices.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2022

In-medium polarization tensor in strong magnetic fields (I): Magneto-birefringence at finite temperature and density

We investigate in-medium polarization effects of the fermion and antifermion pairs at finite temperature and density in strong magnetic fields within the lowest Landau level approximation. Inspecting the integral representation of the polarization tensor by analytic and numerical methods, we provide both the real and imaginary parts of the polarization tensor obtained after delicate interplay between the vacuum and medium contributions essentially due to the Pauli-blocking effect. Especially, we provide a complete analytic form of the polarization tensor at zero temperature and finite density that exhibits an exact cancellation and associated relocation of the singular threshold behaviors for a single photon decay to a fermion and antifermion pair. As a physical application of the in-medium polarization tensor, we discuss the magneto-birefringence that is polarization-dependent dispersion relations of photons induced by the strong magnetic fields.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2022

In-medium polarization tensor in strong magnetic fields (II): Axial Ward identity at finite temperature and density

We investigate the axial Ward identity (AWI) for massive fermions in strong magnetic fields. The divergence of the axial-vector current is computed at finite temperature and/or density with the help of a relation between the polarization and anomaly diagrams in the effective (1+1) dimensions realized in the lowest Landau level (LLL). We discuss delicate interplay between the vacuum and medium contributions that determines patterns of the spectral flow in the adiabatic limit and, more generally, the diabatic chirality production rate. We also establish an explicit relation between the AWIs from the LLL approximation and from the familiar triangle diagrams in the naive perturbative series with respect to the coupling constant.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2022

Radiative hadronization: Photon emission at hadronization from quark-gluon plasma

We investigate photon emission at the hadronization stage from a quark-gluon plasma created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. A recombination-model picture suggests that a quark and an antiquark bind into a meson state in hadronization, which would apparently violate the energy conservation if there is nothing else involved. We consider here a hadronization process where the recombination accompanies a photon emission. This is an analog of the "{\it radiative recombination}" known in plasma physics, such as $e^- + p^+ \to {\rm H}^0 +γ$, which occurs when an electromagnetic plasma goes back to a neutral atomic gas. The "radiative hadronization" picture will bring about (i) an enhancement of the photon yield, (ii) significant flow of photons similar to that of hadrons, and (iii) the photon transverse momentum ($p_T$) distribution with a thermal profile whose effective temperature is given by blue-shifted temperature of quarks. Here as a simplest and phenomenological realization of the radiative hadronization, we modify the recombination model to involve a photon emission and evaluate the photon yield with this modified model. Adding this contribution to the direct photon yield along with thermal photon contribution calculated with a hydrodynamic model and a parametrized contribution of prompt photons, we study the $p_T$ spectrum and elliptic flow of the photons produced in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and LHC energies.

nucl-th↗
arXiv2020

Note on all-order Landau-level structures of the Heisenberg-Euler effective actions for QED and QCD

We investigate the Landau-level structures encoded in the famous Heisenberg-Euler (HE) effective action in constant electromagnetic fields. We first discuss the HE effective actions for scalar and spinor QED, and then extend it to the QCD analogue in the covariantly constant chromo-electromagnetic fields. We identify all the Landau levels and the Zeeman energies starting out from the proper-time representations at the one-loop order, and derive the vacuum persistence probability for the Schwinger mechanism in the summation form over independent contributions of the all-order Landau levels. We find an enhancement of the Schwinger mechanism catalyzed by a magnetic field for spinor QED and, in contrast, a stronger exponential suppression for scalar QED due to the "zero-point energy" of the Landau quantization. For QCD, we identify the discretized energy levels of the transverse and longitudinal gluon modes on the basis of their distinct Zeeman energies, and explicitly confirm the cancellation between the longitudinal-gluon and ghost contributions in the Schwinger mechanism. We also discuss the unstable ground state of the perturbative gluon excitations known as the Nielsen-Olesen instability.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2019

Kondo phase diagram of quark matter

We discuss the ground state of a quark matter containing heavy quarks as impurities in a simple model which exhibits the QCD Kondo effect. The model includes a current-current interaction with the color exchange between a light quark ($ψ$) and a heavy quark ($Ψ$). We introduce a gap function $Δ\sim \langle \bar ψΨ\rangle $ which represents the correlation between $ψ$ and $Ψ$, and perform the mean-field approximation assuming that heavy quarks are uniformly distributed. Values of the gap $Δ$ measure the strength of mixing between $ψ$ and $Ψ$. The gap equation obtained from the minimum of the thermodynamical potential together with the condition for the heavy-quark number conservation turns out to allow for nonzero values of the gap as the most stable state. We draw a phase diagram in $μ$ (the light-quark chemical potential) and $λ$ (an analog of the heavy-quark chemical potential) plane, and identify the region where the QCD Kondo effect occurs.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2017

Interplay between chiral symmetry breaking and the QCD Kondo effect

We investigate the interplay between the (light-light quark) chiral condensate and heavy-light quark condensate induced by the QCD Kondo effect, which is described by an effective Lagrangian with four-point interactions and the mean-field approximation. We find that the appearance of Kondo condensates decreases the critical chemical potential of the chiral condensate. In the region near the critical chemical potential, a coexistence phase with two kinds of condensates can appear. The behavior of such an interplay at finite temperature and with nonzero current light-quark mass is also discussed.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2017

Anatomy of the magnetic catalysis by renormalization-group method

We first examine the scaling argument for a renormalization-group (RG) analysis applied to a system subject to the dimensional reduction in strong magnetic fields, and discuss the fact that a four-Fermi operator of the low-energy excitations is marginal irrespective of the strength of the coupling constant in underlying theories. We then construct a scale-dependent effective four-Fermi interaction as a result of screened photon exchanges at weak coupling, and establish the RG method appropriately including the screening effect, in which the RG evolution from ultraviolet to infrared scales is separated into two stages by the screening-mass scale. Based on a precise agreement between the dynamical mass gaps obtained from the solutions of the RG and Schwinger-Dyson equations, we discuss an equivalence between these two approaches. Focusing on QED and Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model, we clarify how the properties of the interactions manifest themselves in the mass gap, and point out an importance of respecting the intrinsic energy-scale dependences in underlying theories for the determination of the mass gap. These studies are expected to be useful for a diagnosis of the magnetic catalysis in QCD.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2017

Topology and stability of the Kondo phase in quark matter

We investigate properties of the ground state of a light quark matter with heavy quark impurities. This system exhibits the "QCD Kondo effect" where the interaction strength between a light quark near the Fermi surface and a heavy quark increases with decreasing energy of the light quark towards the Fermi energy, and diverges at some scale near the Fermi energy, called the Kondo scale. Around and below the Kondo scale, we must treat the dynamics nonperturbatively. As a typical nonperturbative method to treat the strong coupling regime, we adopt a mean-field approach where we introduce a condensate, the Kondo condensate, representing a mixing between a light quark and a heavy quark, and determine the ground state in the presence of the Kondo condensate. We show that the ground state is a topologically non-trivial state and the heavy quark spin forms the hedgehog configuration in the momentum space. We can define the Berry phase for the ground-state wavefunction in the momentum space which is associated with a monopole at the position of a heavy quark. We also investigate fluctuations around the mean field in the random-phase approximation, and show the existence of (exciton-like) collective excitations made of a hole $h$ of a light quark and a heavy quark $Q$.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2016

Magnetically induced QCD Kondo effect

The "QCD Kondo effect" stems from the color exchange interaction in QCD with non-Abelian property, and can be realized in a high-density quark matter containing heavy-quark impurities. We propose a novel type of the QCD Kondo effect induced by a strong magnetic field. In addition to the fact that the magnetic field does not affect the color degrees of freedom, two properties caused by the Landau quantization in a strong magnetic field are essential for the "magnetically induced QCD Kondo effect"; (1) dimensional reduction to 1+1-dimensions, and (2) finiteness of the density of states for lowest energy quarks. We demonstrate that, in a strong magnetic field $B$, the scattering amplitude of a massless quark off a heavy quark impurity indeed shows a characteristic behavior of the Kondo effect. The resulting Kondo scale is estimated as $Λ_{\rm K} \simeq \sqrt{e_qB}\ α_{s}^{1/3} {\rm{exp}}\{-{4}π/N_{c} α_{s} {\rm{log}}( 4 π/α_{s}) \}$ where $α_{s}$ and $N_c$ are the fine structure constant of strong interaction and the number of colors in QCD, and $e_q$ is the electric charge of light quarks.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2015

Photon and dilepton spectra from nonlinear QED effects in supercritical magnetic fields induced by heavy-ion collisions

We discuss properties of photons in extremely strong magnetic fields induced by the relativistic heavy-ion collisions. We investigate the vacuum birefringence, the real-photon decay, and the photon splitting which are all forbidden in the ordinary vacuum, but become possible in strong magnetic fields. These effects potentially give rise to anisotropies in photon and dilepton spectra.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2015

QCD Kondo effect: quark matter with heavy-flavor impurities

We show that the Kondo effect occurs in light quark matter which contains heavy quarks as impurities. We consider a scattering between a heavy-flavor impurity and a light quark near a Fermi surface which is mediated by gluon-exchange interactions. We find that the scattering amplitude has a logarithmic infrared divergence originating from imperfect cancellation between quark-impurity and hole-impurity scatterings in a loop integral, implying the presence of a strongly coupled regime near the Fermi surface. Renormalization group method is used to find the Kondo scale where a running coupling constant hits a Landau pole. Following an illustration by a simple contact-interaction model, we examine gluon-exchange interactions on the basis of high density QCD.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2015

Euler-Heisenberg-Weiss action for QCD+QED

We derive an analytic expression for one-loop effective action of QCD+QED at zero and finite temperatures by using the Schwinger's proper time method. The result is a nonlinear effective action not only for electromagnetic and chromo-electromagnetic fields but also the Polyakov loop, and thus reproduces the Euler-Heisenberg action in QED, QCD, and QED+QCD, and also the Weiss potential for the Polyakov loop at finite temperature. As applications of this "Euler-Heisenberg-Weiss" action in QCD+QED, we investigate quark pair productions induced by QCD+QED fields at zero temperature and the Polyakov loop in the presence of strong electromagnetic fields. Quark one-loop contribution to the effective potential of the Polyakov loop explicitly breaks the center symmetry, and is found to be enhanced by the magnetic field, which is consistent with the inverse magnetic catalysis observed in lattice QCD simulation.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2014

Dynamic Critical Exponent from One- and Two-Particle Irreducible 1/N Expansions of Effective and Microscopic Theories

We study the dynamic critical exponent from effective and microscopic theories. We employ a simple TDGL model, or model A in the classification of Hohenberg and Halperin, as an effective theory and the imaginary time formalism of the finite-temperature filed theory as a microscopic theory. Taking an O(N) scalar model as an example and carrying out the 1/N expansion up to the NLO in the 1PI and 2PI effective actions, we compare the low-energy and low-momentum behavior of the response function in the effective theory and of the retarded Green's function in the microscopic theory. At the NLO of the 1PI 1/N expansion the low-energy and low-momentum behavior of the two-point function is very much different in the microscopic and effective theories: in the field theory it is dominated by the propagating mode while in model A it is dominated by the diffusive mode. Also, in the microscopic theory the dynamic critical exponent, z, depends on whether the kinematics is relativistic or nonrelativistic. In contrast, at the NLO of the 2PI 1/N expansion the microscopic and effective theories are equivalent. They satisfy exactly the same Kadanoff-Baym equation. Also, whether the kinematics is relativistic or nonrelativistic in the microscopic theory becomes irrelevant. This implies that the diffusive mode with z = 2 + O(1/N) is dominant at low energies and momenta even in the microscopic theory at the NLO of the 2PI 1/N expansion, though we do not explicitly solve the Kadanoff-Baym equation. We also try to improve the calculation of the dynamic critical exponent of model A by incorporating the static 2PI NLO correlations. The obtained critical exponent is slightly smaller than the previous result and its N dependence is also milder than the previous one.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2014

Forward Hadron Productions in high energy pp collisions from a Monte-Carlo generator for Color Glass Condensate

We develop a Monte-Carlo event generator based on combination of a parton production formula including the effects of parton saturation (called the DHJ formula) and hadronization process due to the Lund string fragmentation model. This event generator is designed for the description of hadron productions at forward rapidities and in a wide transverse momentum range in high-energy proton-proton collisions. We analyze transverse momentum spectra of charged hadrons as well as identified particles; pion, kaon, (anti-)proton at RHIC energy, and ultra-forward neutral pion spectra from LHCf experiment. We compare our results to those obtained in other models based on parton-hadron duality and fragmentation functions.

hep-ph↗