Anomalies and chiral symmetry in QCD

I review some aspects of the interplay between anomalies and chiral symmetry. The quantum anomaly that breaks the U(1) axial symmetry of massless QCD leaves behind a flavor-singlet discrete chiral invariance. When the mass is turned on this residual symmetry has a close connection with the strong CP violating parameter theta. One result is that a first order transition is usually expected when the strong CP violating angle passes through pi. This symmetry can be understood either in terms of effective chiral Lagrangians or in terms of the underlying quark fields.     

The nucleon and Δ-resonance masses in relativistic chiral effective-field theory

We study the chiral behavior of the nucleon and Δ-isobar masses within a manifestly covariant chiral effective-field theory, consistent with the analyticity principle. We compute the πN and πΔ one-loop contributions to the mass and field-normalization constant, and find that they can be described in terms of universal relativistic loop functions, multiplied by appropriate spin, isospin and coupling constants. We show that these manifestly relativistic one-loop corrections, when properly renormalized, obey the chiral power-counting and vanish in the chiral limit. The results including only the πN-loop corrections compare favorably with the lattice QCD data for the pion-mass dependence of the nucleon and Δ masses, while inclusion of the πΔ loops tends to spoil this agreement.     

Axially symmetric multi-baryon solutions and their quantization in the chiral quark soliton model

We study axially symmetric solutions with B=2-5 in the chiral quark soliton model. In the background of axially symmetric chiral fields, the quark eigenstates and profile functions of the chiral fields are computed self-consistently. The resultant quark bound spectrum are doubly degenerate due to the symmetry of the chiral field. Upon quantization, various observable spectra of the chiral solitons are obtained. Taking account of the Finkelstein-Rubinstein constraints, we show that the quantum numbers of our solitons coincide with the physical observations for B=2 and 4 while B=3 and 5 do not.     

Anyonic loops in three-dimensional spin liquid and chiral spin liquid

We established a large class of exactly soluble spin liquids and chiral spin liquids on three-dimensional helix lattices by introducing Kitaev-type's spin coupling. In the chiral spin liquids, exact stable ground states with spontaneous breaking of the time reversal symmetry are found. The fractionalized loop excitations in both the spin and chiral spin liquids obey non-Abelian statistics. We characterize this kind of statistics by non-Abelian Berry phase and quantum algebra relation. The topological correlation of loops is independent of local order parameter and it measures the intrinsic global quantum entanglement of degenerate ground states.     

Chiral susceptibility and chiral phase transition in Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model

We give a general relation between the chiral susceptibility and the thermodynamical potential and a relation between the chiral susceptibility and the condition for furcations to appear in the Wigner solution(s) in the Nambu–Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model. We find that the chiral susceptibility is a quantity able to represent the appearance of furcation in the solution(s) of the gap equation and the concavo–convexity of the thermodynamical potential in the NJL model. It indicates that the chiral susceptibility can identify the stability of the states and the chiral phase transition in NJL model. We propose that analyzing the chiral susceptibility may play an important role in studying the chiral phase transition in approaches superior to the NJL model.     

The invariant factor of the chiral determinant

The coupling of spin 0 and spin 1 external fields to Dirac fermions defines a theory which displays gauge chiral symmetry. Quantum-mechanically, functional integration of the fermions yields the determinant of the Dirac operator, known as the chiral determinant. Its modulus is chiral invariant but not so its phase, which carries the chiral anomaly through the Wess–Zumino–Witten term. Here we find the remarkable result that, upon removal from the chiral determinant of this known anomalous part, the remaining chiral-invariant factor is just the square root of the determinant of a local covariant operator of the Klein–Gordon type. This procedure bypasses the integrability obstruction allowing one to write down a functional that correctly reproduces both the modulus and the phase of the chiral determinant. The technique is illustrated by computing the effective action in two dimensions at leading order (LO) in the derivative expansion. The results previously obtained by indirect methods are indeed reproduced.     

The Fubini-Furlan-Rosetti sum rule and related aspects in light of covariant baryon chiral perturbation theory<Superscript>⋆</Superscript>

We analyze the Fubini-Furlan-Rosetti sum rule in the framework of covariant baryon chiral perturbation theory to leading one-loop accuracy and including next-to-leading-order polynomial contributions. We discuss the relation between the subtraction constants in the invariant amplitudes and certain low-energy constants employed in earlier chiral perturbation theory studies of threshold neutral pion photoproduction off nucleons. In particular, we consider the corrections to the sum rule due to the finite pion mass and show that below the threshold they agree well with determinations based on fixed-t dispersion relations. We also discuss the energy dependence of the electric dipole amplitude E₀₊.     

Crossover from a continuum study of chiral susceptibility

We derive a model-independent integral formula for chiral susceptibility and attempt to present a continuum model study of it within the framework of Dyson–Schwinger equations. An appropriate regularization is implemented to remove the temperature-independent quadratic divergence inherent in this quantity. While it demonstrates a second-order phase transition characteristic in the chiral limit, the result obtained supports a crossover at physical current quark masses, which is in good agreement with recent lattice studies.     

Optical Rectification in Isotropic Thin Film Composed of Chiral Molecules with a Tripod-Like Structure

Optical rectification （OR） effect in the isotropic thin film consisting of chiral molecules with a tripod-like structure is investigated. The expressions of static-electric polarization in the isotropic chiral thin films and the relations between the OR and microscopic parameters of chiral medium are obtained by theoretical derivation. Furthermore, the relations of static electric polarization with the wavelength of incident light and parameters of chiral molecules are simulated numerically.     

The quark-gluon vertex in Landau gauge QCD: Its role in dynamical chiral symmetry breaking and quark confinement

The infrared behavior of the quark-gluon vertex of quenched Landau gauge QCD is studied by analyzing its Dyson-Schwinger equation. Building on previously obtained results for Green functions in the Yang-Mills sector, we analytically derive the existence of power-law infrared singularities for this vertex. We establish that dynamical chiral symmetry breaking leads to the self-consistent generation of components of the quark-gluon vertex forbidden when chiral symmetry is forced to stay in the Wigner-Weyl mode. In the latter case the running strong coupling assumes an infrared fixed point. If chiral symmetry is broken, either dynamically or explicitly, the running coupling is infrared divergent. Based on a truncation for the quark-gluon vertex Dyson-Schwinger equation which respects the analytically determined infrared behavior, numerical results for the coupled system of the quark propagator and vertex Dyson-Schwinger equation are presented. The resulting quark mass function as well as the vertex function show only a very weak dependence on the current quark mass in the deep infrared. From this we infer by an analysis of the quark-quark scattering kernel a linearly rising quark potential with an almost mass independent string tension in the case of broken chiral symmetry. Enforcing chiral symmetry does lead to a Coulomb type potential. Therefore, we conclude that chiral symmetry breaking and confinement are closely related. Furthermore, we discuss aspects of confinement as the absence of long-range van der Waals forces and Casimir scaling. An examination of experimental data for quarkonia provides further evidence for the viability of the presented mechanism for quark confinement in the Landau gauge.     

Neutrino Oscillation Induced by Chiral Phase Transition

Electric charge neutrality provides a relationship between chiral dynamics and neutrino propagation in compact stars. Due to the sudden drop of the electron density at the first-order chiral phase transition, the oscillation for low energy neutrinos is significant and can be regarded as a signature of chiral symmetry restoration in the core of compact stars.     

Electroweak chiral Lagrangian for left–right symmetric models: The matter sector

The matter sector of electroweak chiral Lagrangian up to dimension four operators for left–right symmetric models with a neutral light Higgs is provided. The connection of these operators to Yukawa couplings, anomalous gauge couplings and parameters in the matter sector of conventional electroweak chiral Lagrangian is made. It is shown that there exists proper parameter space to loosen constraint for the mass of right handed gauge boson from the mass difference of neutral K meson.     

Waves in planar waveguide containing chiral nihility metamaterial

We investigate the guided waves in a three-layered planar waveguide, with one layer filled with air and the other two filled with the chiral nihility material. We have shown that no electric field exists in the chiral layers. However, the magnetic fields are nonzero within the chiral regions due to the decoupling between electric and magnetic fields. The disappearance of the electric field is caused by the negative reflections for two egienwaves in the chiral nihility at the boundaries of the planar waveguide. The electromagnetic energies can only be guided away from the source in the air layer. Simulation results have validated our theoretical analysis.     

Hyperpolarizabilities of Chiral Molecules Based on Three-Coupled-Oscillator Model

A chiral molecular model of three coupled oscillators is established. A set of coupling equations and hyperpolarizabilities for the chiral molecules with the tripod structure are presented. The expression of second-order nonlinear susceptibility is derived for an isotropic molecular system. The calculated hyperpolarizabilities o[ NPAN and NPP chiral molecules are consistent with the experimental results and the applicability of this model is validated.     

Chiral planar waveguide for guiding single-mode backward wave

Single-mode backward wave is shown to be guided in a planar dielectric waveguide with a strong chiral core. The significant difference of such a waveguide from the traditional one is the guidance of single-mode backward wave, without using negative permittivity and/or negative permeability. In the design, we generalize the idea of total internal reflection to the chiral medium and make a numerical analysis on the reflection with oblique incidence. We deduce rigorously a general solution of incident wave on the boundary of two arbitrary chiral magneto-electric media. We observe that the impedance matching can eliminate the coupling between two eigenwaves in chiral media. With strong chiral core and the matched impedance with cladding, one eigenwave becomes a backward wave and can be guided without transferring to the other eigenwave. If a single-mode propagation condition is satisfied, we will get single-mode backward guided wave. A special interface has been designed to prevent the forward wave entering the waveguide from the source.     

Is chiral symmetry restored in the excited meson spectrum?

The large degeneracy observed in the excited meson spectrum by the Cristal Barrel Collaboration in the experimental data on proton–antiproton annihilation in flight into mesons in the range 1.9–2.4 GeV has been interpreted as a signal of chiral symmetry restoration. In this work we suggest that such degeneracy may be an indication of the confinement potential modification by color screening. The experimental data can be fairly well reproduced in a constituent quark model with a screened linear confinement potential without changing the dynamical quark mass. Observables that could discriminate our model from those which explicitly restore the chiral symmetry are proposed.     

Meson-meson interactions and Regge propagators

By a reformulation of the loop expansion in the Resonance-Spectrum Expansion amplitude for meson-meson scattering, in terms of s-channel exchange of families of propagator modes, we obtain a formalism which allows for a wider range of applications. The connection with the unitarized amplitudes employed in some chiral theories is discussed. We also define an alternative for the Regge spectra and indicate how this may be observed in experiment.     

Chiral perturbation theory for nucleon generalized parton distributions

We analyze the moments of the isosinglet generalized parton distributions H, E, , of the nucleon in one-loop order of heavy-baryon chiral perturbation theory. We discuss in detail the construction of the operators in the effective theory that are required to obtain all corrections to a given order in the chiral power counting. The results will serve to improve the extrapolation of lattice results to the chiral limit.     

Chiral perturbation theory in a nuclear background

We propose a novel way to formulate chiral perturbation theory (ChPT) in a nuclear background, characterized by a static, non-uniform distribution of the baryon number that describes the finite nucleus. In the limiting case of a uniform distribution, the theory reduces to the well-known zero-temperature in-medium ChPT. The proposed approach is used to calculate the self-energy of the charged pion in the background of the heavy nucleus at O(p⁵) in the chiral expansion, and to derive the leading terms of the pion-nucleus optical potential.