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M. N. Chernodub

Publications and source records attributed to M. N. Chernodub.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources
arXiv2011

Spontaneous electromagnetic superconductivity of vacuum in strong magnetic field: evidence from the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model

Using an extended Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model as a low--energy effective model of QCD, we show that the vacuum in a strong external magnetic field (stronger than 10^{16} Tesla) experiences a spontaneous phase transition to an electromagnetically superconducting state. The unexpected superconductivity of, basically, empty space is induced by emergence of quark-antiquark vector condensates with quantum numbers of electrically charged rho mesons. The superconducting phase possesses an anisotropic inhomogeneous structure similar to a periodic Abrikosov lattice in a type-II superconductor. The superconducting vacuum is made of a new type of vortices which are topological defects in the charged vector condensates. The superconductivity is realized along the axis of the magnetic field only. We argue that this effect is absent in pure QED.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2011

Phase diagram of strong interactions in an external magnetic field

We obtain the phase diagram of strong interactions in the presence of a magnetic field within the linear sigma model coupled to quarks and to the Polyakov loop, and show that the chiral and deconfinement lines can split. We also study the behavior of the chiral condensate in this magnetic environment and find an approximately linear dependence on the external field, in accordance with lattice data.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2011

Phase diagram of chirally imbalanced QCD matter

We compute the QCD phase diagram in the plane of the chiral chemical potential and temperature using the linear sigma model coupled to quarks and to the Polyakov loop. The chiral chemical potential accounts for effects of imbalanced chirality due to QCD sphaleron transitions which may emerge in heavy-ion collisions. We found three effects caused by the chiral chemical potential: the imbalanced chirality (i) tightens the link between deconfinement and chiral phase transitions; (ii) lowers the common critical temperature; (iii) strengthens the order of the phase transition by converting the crossover into the strong first order phase transition passing via the second order end-point. Since the fermionic determinant with the chiral chemical potential has no sign problem, the chirally imbalanced QCD matter can be studied in numerical lattice simulations.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2010

Electromagnetically superconducting phase of QCD vacuum induced by strong magnetic field

In this talk we discuss our recent suggestion that the QCD vacuum in a sufficiently strong magnetic field (stronger than 10^{16} Tesla) may undergo a spontaneous transition to an electromagnetically superconducting state. The possible superconducting state is anisotropic (the vacuum exhibits superconductivity only along the axis of the uniform magnetic field) and inhomogeneous (in the transverse directions the vacuum structure shares similarity with the Abrikosov lattice of an ordinary type-II superconductor). The electromagnetic superconductivity of the QCD vacuum is suggested to occur due to emergence of specific quark-antiquark condensates which carry quantum numbers of electrically charged rho mesons. A Lorentz-covariant generalization of the London transport equations for the magnetic-field-induced superconductivity is given.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2010

Phase diagram of hot QCD in an external magnetic field: possible splitting of deconfinement and chiral transitions

The structure of the phase diagram for strong interactions becomes richer in the presence of a magnetic background, which enters as a new control parameter for the thermodynamics. Motivated by the relevance of this physical setting for current and future high-energy heavy ion collision experiments and for the cosmological QCD transitions, we use the linear sigma model coupled to quarks and to Polyakov loops as an effective theory to investigate how the chiral and the deconfining transitions are affected, and present a general picture for the temperature--magnetic field phase diagram. We compute and discuss each contribution to the effective potential for the approximate order parameters, and uncover new phenomena such as the paramagnetically-induced breaking of global Z_3 symmetry, and possible splitting of deconfinement and chiral transitions in a strong magnetic field.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2010

Magnetic-Field-Induced insulator-conductor transition in SU(2) quenched lattice gauge theory

We study the correlator of two vector currents in quenched $SU\lr{2}$ lattice gauge theory with a chirally invariant lattice Dirac operator with a constant external magnetic field. It is found that in the confinement phase the correlator of the components of the current parallel to the magnetic field decays much slower than in the absence of a magnetic field, while for other components the correlation length slightly decreases. We apply the maximal entropy method to extract the corresponding spectral function. In the limit of zero frequency this spectral function yields the electric conductivity of the quenched theory. We find that in the confinement phase the external magnetic field induces nonzero electric conductivity along the direction of the field, transforming the system from an insulator into an anisotropic conductor. In the deconfinement phase the conductivity does not exhibit any sizable dependence on the magnetic field.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2010

Superconductivity of QCD vacuum in strong magnetic field

We show that in a sufficiently strong magnetic field the QCD vacuum may undergo a transition to a new phase where charged $ρ^\pm$ mesons are condensed. In this phase the vacuum behaves as an anisotropic inhomogeneous superconductor which supports superconductivity along the axis of the magnetic field. In the directions transverse to the magnetic field the superconductivity is absent. The magnetic-field-induced anisotropic superconductivity -- which is realized in the cold vacuum, i.e. at zero temperature and density -- is a consequence of a nonminimal coupling of the $ρ$ mesons to the electromagnetic field. The onset of the superconductivity of the charged $ρ^\pm$ mesons should also induce an inhomogeneous superfluidity of the neutral $ρ^0$ mesons. We also argue that due to simple kinematical reasons a strong enough magnetic field makes the lifetime of the $ρ$ mesons longer by closing the main channels of the strong decays of the $ρ$ mesons into charged pions.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2010

Elastic Energy and Phase Structure in a Continuous Spin Ising Chain with Applications to the Protein Folding Problem

We present a numerical Monte Carlo analysis of a continuos spin Ising chain that can describe the statistical proterties of folded proteins. We find that depending on the value of the Metropolis temperature, the model displays the three known nontrivial phases of polymers: At low temperatures the model is in a collapsed phase, at medium temperatures it is in a random walk phase, and at high temperatures it enters the self-avoiding random walk phase. By investigating the temperature dependence of the specific energy we confirm that the transition between the collapsed phase and the random walk phase is a phase transition, while the random walk phase and self-avoiding random walk phase are separated from each other by a cross-over transition. We also compare the predictions of the model to a phenomenological elastic energy formula, proposed by Huang and Lei to describe folded proteins.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗
arXiv2010

Two-component liquid model for the quark-gluon plasma

We consider a two-component-liquid model, a la Landau, for the quark-gluon plasma. Qualitatively, the model fits well some crucial observations concerning the plasma properties. Dynamically, the model assumes the existence of an effective scalar field which is condensed. The existence of such a condensate is supported by lattice data. We indicate a possible crucial test of the model by lattice simulations.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2010

Pipelike current-carrying vortices in two-component condensates

We study straight vortices with global longitudinal currents in the Bogomol'ny limit of the Abelian Higgs model with two charged scalar fields. The model possesses global SU(2) and local electromagnetic U(1) symmetries spontaneously broken to global U(1) group, and corresponds to a semilocal limit of the standard electroweak model. We show that the contribution of the global SU(2) current to the vortex energy is proportional to the total current squared. Locally, these vortices carry also longitudinal electromagnetic currents, while the total electromagnetic current flowing through a transverse section of the vortex is always zero. The vortices with high winding numbers have, in general, a nested pipelike structure. The magnetic field of the vortex is concentrated at a certain distance from the geometric center of the vortex, thus resembling a "pipe." This magnetic pipe is layered between two electrically charged pipes that carry longitudinal electric currents in opposite directions.

hep-th↗
arXiv2010

Topological Solitons and Folded Proteins

We propose that protein loops can be interpreted as topological domain-wall solitons. They interpolate between ground states that are the secondary structures like alpha-helices and beta-strands. Entire proteins can then be folded simply by assembling the solitons together, one after another. We present a simple theoretical model that realizes our proposal and apply it to a number of biologically active proteins including 1VII, 2RB8, 3EBX (Protein Data Bank codes). In all the examples that we have considered we are able to construct solitons that reproduce secondary structural motifs such as alpha-helix-loop-alpha-helix and beta-sheet-loop-beta-sheet with an overall root-mean-square-distance accuracy of around 0.7 Angstrom or less for the central alpha-carbons, i.e. within the limits of current experimental accuracy.

physics.bio-ph↗
arXiv2010

Quark electric dipole moment induced by magnetic field

We show numerically that quarks develop an electric dipole moment in the direction of a sufficiently intense magnetic field due to local fluctuations of topological charge. This anomalous CP-odd effect is a spin analogue of the Chiral Magnetic Effect in QCD.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2010

Free magnetized knots of parity-violating deconfined matter in heavy-ion collisions

We show that the local parity violation in the quark-gluon plasma supports existence of free (meta)stable knots of deconfined hot quark matter stabilized by superstrong magnetic fields. The magnetic field in the knots resembles the spheromak plasma state of the magnetic confinement approach to nuclear fusion. The size of the knot is quantized, being inversely proportional to the chiral conductivity of the quark-gluon plasma. The parity symmetry is broken inside the knot. Particles produced in the decays of the knots have unusual azimuthal distribution and specific flavor content. We argue that these knots may be created in noncentral heavy-ion collisions.

nucl-th↗
arXiv2010

Background magnetic field stabilizes QCD string against breaking

The confinement of quarks in hadrons occurs due to formation of QCD string. At large separation between the quarks the QCD string breaks into pieces due to light quark-antiquark pair creation. We argue that there exist a critical background magnetic field e B ~ 16 m_π^2, above which the string breaking is impossible in the transverse directions with respect to the axis of the magnetic field. Thus, at strong enough magnetic field a new, asymmetrically confining phase may form. The effect - which can potentially be tested at LHC/ALICE experiment - leads to abundance of u-quark rich hadrons and to excess of radially excited mesons in the noncentral heavy-ion collisions compared to the central ones.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2009

Numerical study of chiral symmetry breaking in non-Abelian gauge theory with background magnetic field

We investigate the effect of a uniform background magnetic field on the chiral symmetry breaking in SU(2) Yang-Mills theory on the lattice. We observe that the chiral condensate grows linearly with the field strength B up to \sqrt{e B} = 3 GeV as predicted by chiral perturbation theory for full QCD. As the temperature increases the coefficient in front of the linear term gets smaller. In the magnetic field near-zero eigenmodes of the Dirac operator tend to have more regular structure with larger (compared to zero-field case) Hausdorff dimensionality. We suggest that the delocalization of near-zero eigenmodes plays a crucial role in the enhancement of the chiral symmetry breaking.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2009

Numerical study of chiral magnetic effect in quenched SU(2) lattice gauge theory

A possible experimental observation of the chiral magnetic effect in heavy ion collisions at RHIC was recently reported by the STAR Collaboration. We study signatures of this effect in SU(2) lattice gluodynamics with the chirally invariant Dirac operator. We find that at zero temperature the local fluctuations of an electric current of quarks and chirality fluctuations increase with external Abelian magnetic field. The external magnetic field leads to spatial separation of the quark's electric charges. The separation increases with the strength of the magnetic field. As temperature gets higher the dependence of these quantities on the strength of the magnetic field becomes weaker. In the deconfinement phase the local fluctuations of the chiral density and of the spatial components of the quarks electric current are large and are almost independent on the external magnetic field. The local fluctuations of the electric charge density decrease with the strength of the magnetic field in this phase.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2009

Gluon propagators and center vortices at finite temperature

We study influence of center vortices on infrared properties of gluons in the deconfinement phase of quenched QCD. We observe a significant suppression of the magnetic component of the gluon propagator in the low-momentum region after the vortices are removed from the gluon configurations. The propagator of the electric gluon stays almost unaffected by the vortex removal. Our results demonstrate that the center vortices are responsible for important nonperturbative properties of the magnetic component of the quark-gluon plasma.

hep-lat↗