arXiv subjects

Mohamed M. Anber

Publications and source records attributed to Mohamed M. Anber.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2015

Superconductivity at Any Temperature

We construct a 2+1 dimensional model that sustains superconductivity at all temperatures. This is achieved by introducing a Chern Simons mixing term between two Abelian gauge fields A and Z. The superfluid is described by a complex scalar charged under Z, whereas a sufficiently strong magnetic field of A forces the superconducting condensate to form at all temperatures. In fact, at finite temperature, the theory exhibits Berezinsky-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition due to proliferation of topological vortices admitted by our construction. However, the critical temperature is proportional to the magnetic field of A, and thus, the phase transition can be postponed to high temperatures by increasing the strength of the magnetic field. This model can be a step towards realizing the long sought room temperature superconductivity.

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arXiv2015

Impact of Axions on Confinement in Three and Two Dimensions

In this paper we discuss well-known three- and two-dimensional models with confinement, namely, the Polyakov compact electrodynamics in 3D and two-dimensional CP(N-1) sigma model, and reveal changes in the confining regimes of these model upon adding the axion field. In both cases the addition of axion has a drastic impact. In the CP(N-1) model the axion-induced deconfinement was known previously, but we discuss a new feature not considered in the previous publication.

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arXiv2015

Confined Vortices in Topologically Massive U(1)$\times$U(1) Theory

We report on a new topological vortex solution in U(1)$\times$U(1) Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory. The existence of the vortex is envisaged by analytical means, and a numerical solution is obtained by integrating the equations of motion. These vortices have a long-range force because one of the U(1)s remains unbroken in the infrared, which is guarded by the Coleman-Hill theorem. The sum of the winding numbers of an ensemble of vortices has to vanish; otherwise the system would have a logarithmically divergent energy. In turn, these vortices exhibit classical confinement. We investigate the rich parameter space of the solutions, and show that one recovers the Abrikosov-Nielsen-Olesen, U(1) Maxwell-Chern-Simons, U(1) pure Chern-Simons and global vortices as various limiting cases. Unlike these limiting cases, the higher winding solutions of our vortices carry non-integer charges under the broken U(1). This is the first vortex solution exhibiting such behavior.

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arXiv2015

Strings from domain walls in supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory and adjoint QCD

We study strings between static quarks in QCD with $n_f$ adjoint fermions, including $N=1$ Super Yang-Mills (SYM), in the calculable regime on $\mathbb R^3\times \mathbb S^1$. We find that they have many qualitatively new features not previously known. The difference from other realizations of abelian confinement is due to the composite nature of magnetic bions, whose Dirac quantum with fundamental quarks is two, and to the unbroken part of the Weyl group. In particular we show that strings are composed of two domain walls, that quarks are not confined on domain walls, that strings can end on domain walls, and that "Y" or "$Δ$" baryons can form. We briefly discuss their lightest modes and decompactification limit.

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arXiv2015

Hypermagnetic Fields and Baryon Asymmetry from Pseudoscalar Inflation

We show that maximally helical hypermagnetic fields produced during pseudoscalar inflation can generate the observed baryon asymmetry of the universe via the B+L anomaly in the Standard Model. We find that most of the parameter space of pseudoscalar inflation that explains the cosmological data leads to baryon overproduction, hence the models of natural inflation are severely constrained. We also point out a connection between the baryon number and topology of the relic magnetic fields. Both the magnitude and sign of magnetic helicity can be detected in future diffuse gamma ray data. This will be a smoking gun evidence for a link between inflation and the baryon asymmetry of the Universe.

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arXiv2014

The absence of IR renormalons in gauge theories on $\mathbb R^3\times \mathbb S^1$ and what it means for resurgence

We analyze the renormalon diagram of gauge theories on $\mathbb R^3\times \mathbb S^1$. In particular, we perform exact one loop calculations for the vacuum polarization in QCD with adjoint matter and observe that all infrared logarithms, as functions of the external momentum, cancel between the vacuum part and finite volume part, which eliminates the IR renormalon problem. We argue that the singularities in the Borel plane, arising from the topological neutral bions, are not associated with renormalons, but with the proliferation of the Feynman diagrams. As a byproduct, we obtain, for the first time, an exact one-loop result of the vacuum polarization which can be adapted to the case of thermal compactification of QCD.

hep-th↗

arXiv2014

Deconfinement and continuity between thermal and (super) Yang-Mills theory for all gauge groups

We study the phase structure of N=1 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory on R^3XS^1, with massive gauginos, periodic around the S^1, with Sp(2N) (N>=2), Spin(N) (N>=5), G_2, F_4, E_6, E_7, E_8 gauge groups. As the gaugino mass m is increased, with S^1 size and strong coupling scale fixed, we find a first-order phase transition both for theories with and without a center. This semiclassically calculable transition is driven, as in SU(N) and G_2, arxiv.org/abs/1205.0290 and arxiv.org/abs/1212.1238, by a competition between monopole-instantons and exotic topological "molecules"---"neutral" or "magnetic" bions. We compute the trace of the Polyakov loop and its two-point correlator near the transition. We find a behavior similar to the one observed near the thermal deconfinement transition in the corresponding pure Yang-Mills (YM) theory in lattice studies (whenever available). Our results lend further support to the conjectured continuity, as a function of m, between the quantum phase transition studied here and the thermal deconfinement transition in YM theory. We also study the theta-angle dependence of the transition, elaborate on the importance of the quantum-corrected moduli-space metric at large N, and offer comments for the future.

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arXiv2013

Deconfinement in N=1 super Yang-Mills theory on R^3 x S^1 via dual-Coulomb gas and "affine" XY-model

We study finite-temperature N=1 SU(2) super Yang-Mills theory, compactified on a spatial circle of size L with supersymmetric boundary conditions. In the semiclassical small-L regime, a deconfinement transition occurs at T_c <<1/L. The transition is due to a competition between non-perturbative topological "molecules"---magnetic and neutral bion-instantons---and electrically charged W-bosons and superpartners. Compared to deconfinement in non-supersymmetric QCD(adj) arXiv:1112.6389, the novelty is the relevance of the light modulus scalar field. It mediates interactions between neutral bions (and W-bosons), serves as an order parameter for the Z_2^{L} center symmetry associated with the non-thermal circle, and explicitly breaks the electric-magnetic (Kramers-Wannier) duality enjoyed by non-supersymmetric QCD(adj) near T_c. We show that deconfinement can be studied using an effective two-dimensional gas of electric and magnetic charges with (dual) Coulomb and Aharonov-Bohm interactions, or, equivalently, via an XY-spin model with a symmetry-breaking perturbation, where each system couples to the scalar field. To study the realization of the discrete R-symmetry and the Z_2^{beta} thermal and Z_2^{L} non-thermal center symmetries, we perform Monte Carlo simulations of both systems. The dual-Coulomb gas simulations are a novel way to analyze deconfinement and provide a new venue to study the phase structure of a class of two-dimensional condensed matter models that can be mapped into dual-Coulomb gases. Our results indicate a continuous deconfinement transition, with Z_2^{L} remaining unbroken at the transition. Thus, the SYM transition appears similar to the one in SU(2) QCD(adj) arXiv:1112.6389 and is also likely to be characterized by continuously varying critical exponents.

hep-th↗

arXiv2013

QCD in magnetic field, Landau levels and double-life of unbroken center-symmetry

We study the thermal confinement/deconfinement and non-thermal quantum phase transitions or rapid cross-overs in QCD and QCD-like theories in external magnetic fields. At large magnetic fields, while the contribution of gauge fluctuations to Wilson-line potential remains unaltered at one-loop order, the contribution of fermions effectively becomes two lower dimensional and is enhanced by the density of states of the lowest Landau level (LLL). In a spatial compactification and for heavy adjoint fermions, this enhancement leads to a calculable zero temperature quantum phase transition on R^3*S^1 driven by a competition between the center-destabilizing gauge contribution and center-stabilizing LLL fermions. We also show that at a (formal) asymptotically large magnetic field, the adjoint fermions with arbitrarily large but fixed mass stabilize the center symmetry. This is an exotic case of simultaneous non-decoupling of large mass fermions (due to the enhancement by the LLL density of states) and decoupling from the low energy effective field theory. This observation has important implications for both Hosotani mechanism, for which gauge symmetry "breaking" occurs, and large-N volume independence (Eguchi-Kawai reduction), for which gauge structure is never "broken". Despite sounding almost self-contradictory, we carefully explain the physical scales entering the problem, double-meaning of unbroken center symmetry and how a clash is avoided. We also identify, for both thermal and spatial compactification, the jump in magnetic susceptibility as an order parameter for the deconfinement transition. The predictions of our analysis are testable by using current lattice techniques.

hep-th↗

arXiv2013

The abelian confinement mechanism revisited: new aspects of the Georgi-Glashow model

The confinement problem remains one of the most difficult problems in theoretical physics. An important step toward the solution of this problem is the Polyakov's work on abelian confinement. The Georgi-Glashow model is a natural testing ground for this mechanism which has been surprising us by its richness and wide applicability. In this work, we shed light on two new aspects of this model in 2+1 D. First, we develop a many-body description of the effective degrees of freedom. Namely, we consider a non-relativistic gas of W-bosons in the background of monopole-instanton plasma. Many-body treatment is a standard toolkit in condensed matter physics. However, we add a new twist by supplying the monopole-instantons as external background field. Using this construction, we calculate the exact form of the potential between two electric probes as a function of their separation. This potential is expressed in terms of the Meijer-G function which interpolates between logarithmic and linear behavior at small and large distances, respectively. Second, we develop a systematic approach to integrate out the effect of the W-bosons at finite temperature in the range 0<T<M_W, where M_W is the W-boson mass, starting from the full relativistic partition function of the Georgi-Glashow model. Using a heat kernel expansion that takes into account the non-trivial thermal holonomy, we show that the partition function describes a three-dimensional two-component Coulomb gas. We repeat our analysis using the many-body description which yields the same result and provides a check on our formalism. At temperatures close to the deconfinement temperature, the gas becomes essentially two-dimensional recovering the partition function of the dual sine-Gordon model that was considered in a previous work.

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arXiv2013

Theta dependence of the deconfining phase transition in pure SU(N_c) Yang-Mills theories

Recently, it has been conjectured that deconfining phase transition in SU(N_c) pure Yang-Mills theories is continuously connected to a quantum phase transition in softly broken N=1 super Yang-Mills on R^{1,2}*S^1. We exploit this conjecture to study the strength of the transition and deconfining temperature as a function of the vacuum angle theta in pure Yang-Mills. We find that the transition temperature is a decreasing function of theta in [0, π), in an excellent agreement with recent lattice simulations. We also predict that the transition becomes stronger for the same range of theta, and comment on the theta dependence in the large N_c limit. More lattice studies are required to test our predictions.

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arXiv2012

The SU(3)/Z_3 QCD(adj) deconfinement transition via the gauge theory/"affine" XY-model duality

Earlier, two of us and M. Unsal [arXiv:1112.6389] showed that some 4d gauge theories, compactified on a small spatial circle of size L and considered at temperatures 1/beta near deconfinement, are dual to 2d "affine" XY-spin models. We use the duality to study deconfinement in SU(3)/Z_3 theories with n_f>1 massless adjoint Weyl fermions, QCD(adj) on R^2 x S^1_beta x S^1_L. The"affine" XY-model describes two "spins" - compact scalars taking values in the SU(3) root lattice, with nearest-neighbor interactions and subject to an "external field" preserving the topological Z_3^t and a discrete Z_3^chi subgroup of the chiral symmetry of the 4d gauge theory. The equivalent Coulomb gas representation of the theory exhibits electric-magnetic duality, which is also a high-/low-temperature duality. A renormalization group analysis suggests - but is not convincing, due to the onset of strong coupling - that the self-dual point is a fixed point, implying a continuous deconfinement transition. Here, we study the nature of the transition via Monte Carlo simulations. The Z_3^t x Z_3^chi order parameter, its susceptibility, the vortex density, the energy per spin, and the specific heat are measured over a range of volumes, temperatures, and "external field" strengths (in the gauge theory, these correspond to magnetic bion fugacities). The finite-size scaling of the susceptibility and specific heat we find is characteristic of a first-order transition. Furthermore, for sufficiently large but still smaller than unity bion fugacity (as can be achieved upon an increase of the S^1_L size), at the critical temperature we find two distinct peaks of the energy probability distribution, indicative of a first-order transition, as has been seen in earlier simulations of the full 4d QCD(adj) theory. We end with discussions of the global phase diagram in the beta-L plane for different numbers of flavors.

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arXiv2012

Self-healing of unitarity in effective field theories and the onset of new physics

In effective field theories it is common to identify the onset of new physics with the violation of tree-level unitarity. However, we show that this is parametrically incorrect in the case of chiral perturbation theory, and is probably theoretically incorrect in general. In the chiral theory, we explore perturbative unitarity violation as a function of the number of colors and the number of flavors, holding the scale of the "new physics" (i.e. QCD) fixed. This demonstrates that the onset of new physics is parametrically uncorrelated with tree-unitarity violation. When the latter scale is lower than that of new physics, the effective theory must heal its unitarity violation itself, which is expected because the field theory satisfies the requirements of unitarity. In the chiral theory, the self-healing results in a resonant structure with scalar quantum numbers. In the electroweak variant of this argument, the structure must have the properties of the Higgs and must couple proportional to the mass in both gauge boson and fermion scattering. A similar example can be seen in the case of general relativity coupled to multiple matter fields, where iteration of the vacuum polarization diagram restores unitarity. We present arguments that suggest the correct identification should be connected to the onset of inelasticity rather than unitarity violation. We describe how the onset of inelasticity can occur in the effective theory, although it does not appear possible to predict the onset reliably.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2012

2d affine XY-spin model/ 4d gauge theory duality and deconfinement

We introduce a duality between two-dimensional XY-spin models with symmetry-breaking perturbations and certain four-dimensional SU(2)and SU(2)/Z_2 gauge theories, compactified on a small spatial circle R^(1,2) x S^1, and considered at temperatures near the deconfinement transition. In a Euclidean set up, the theory is defined on R^2 x T^2. Similarly, thermal gauge theories of higher rank are dual to new families of "affine" XY-spin models with perturbations. For rank two, these are related to models used to describe the melting of a 2d crystal with a triangular lattice. The connection is made through a multi-component electric-magnetic Coulomb gas representation for both systems. Perturbations in the spin system map to topological defects in the gauge theory, such as monopole-instantons or magnetic bions, and the vortices in the spin system map to the electrically charged W-bosons in field theory (or vice versa, depending on the duality frame). The duality permits one to use the two-dimensional technology of spin systems to study the thermal deconfinement and discrete chiral transitions in four-dimensional SU(N) gauge theories with n_f >=1 adjoint Weyl fermions.

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arXiv2012

Non-Gaussianities and chiral gravitational waves in natural steep inflation

In arXiv:0908.4089, we have proposed a model where natural inflation is realized on a steep potential as a consequence of the interaction of the inflaton with gauge fields through an axion-like coupling. In the present work we study the nongaussianities and the spectrum of tensor modes generated in this scenario. The nongaussianities turn out to be compatible with current observations and can be large enough to be detectable by Planck. The non-observation of tensor modes imposes new constraints on the parameter space of the system that are about one order of magnitude stronger than those found in our previous work. More importantly, in certain regions of the parameter space tensor modes might be detected by upcoming Cosmic Microwave Background experiments even if inflation occurs at energies as low as the TeV scale. In this case the tensor modes would be chiral, and would lead to distinctive parity-violating correlation functions in the CMB.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

On the running of the gravitational constant

We show that there is no useful and universal definition of a running gravitational constant, G(E), in the perturbative regime below the Planck scale. By consideration of the loop corrections to several physical processes, we show that the quantum corrections vary greatly, in both magnitude and sign, and do not exhibit the required properties of a running coupling constant. We comment on the potential challenges of these results for the Asymptotic Safety program.

hep-th↗

arXiv2011

Limiting velocities as running parameters and superluminal neutrinos

In the context of theories where particles can have different limiting velocities, we review the running of particle speeds towards a common limiting velocity at low energy. Motivated by the recent OPERA experimental results, we describe a model where the neutrinos would deviate from the common velocity by more than do other particles in the theory, because their running is slower due to weaker interactions.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2011

Microscopic Structure of Magnetic Bions

Magnetic bions---stable bound states of monopoles and twisted ("Kaluza-Klein") monopoles, carrying two units of magnetic charge---have been shown to be the leading cause of confinement and mass gap in four-dimensional gauge theories with massless adjoint fermions compactified on R**{1,2} x S**1, at least at small S**1. In this paper, we study in detail the bion mechanism and the scales involved for an SU(2) gauge group, using traditional QCD instanton methods. We represent the vacuum functional as the partition function of a bion-anti-bion plasma and obtain the next-to-leading dependence of the mass gap on the S**1 size L at fixed strong-coupling scale Lambda. We find that, at small Lambda x L, the mass gap is an increasing function of L for theories with four massless adjoint Weyl fermions, a case left undetermined by the previous leading-order analysis, and comment on the approach to R**4.

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