Facets of confinement and dynamical chiral symmetry breaking

The gap equation is a cornerstone in understanding dynamical chiral symmetry breaking and may also provide clues to confinement. A symmetry-preserving truncation of its kernel enables proofs of important results and the development of an efficacious phenomenology. We describe a model of the kernel that yields: a momentum-dependent dressed-quark propagator in fair agreement with quenched lattice-QCD results; and chiral limit values, MeV and . It is compared with models inferred from studies of the gauge sector.Received: 30 September 2002, Published online: 22 October 2003PACS: 12.38.Aw General properties of QCD (dynamics, confinement, etc.) - 11.30.Rd Chiral symmetries     

Gluon condensates,chiral symmetry breaking and pion wave-function

We consider here chiral symmetry breaking in quantum chromodynamics arising from gluon condensates in vacuum. Through coherent states of gluons simulating a mean field type of approximation, we show that the off-shell gluon condensates of vacuum generate a mass-like contribution for the quarks, giving rise to chiral symmetry breaking. We next note that spontaneous breaking of global chiral symmetry links the four component quark field operator to the pion wave function. This in turn yields many hadronic properties in the light quark sector in agreement with experiments, leading to the conclusion that low energy hadron properties are primarily driven by the vacuum structure of quantum chromodynamics.     

Confinement,chiral symmetry breaking,and the pion in a chromo-dielectric model of quantum chromodynamics

We study a chirally symmetric effective model of quantum chromodynamics, where the long-range parts of the (non-abelian) gluon self-interactions are assumed to give rise to a color-dielectric field. In particular we show how in this model confinement and the Goldstone pion arise naturally and simultaneously from dynamical chiral symmetry breaking. We also provide justification for successful chiral bag models, including for example the cloudy bag model.     

Isospin breaking in pion Compton scattering

Using chiral perturbation theory we calculate for pion Compton scattering the isospin-breaking effects induced by the difference between the charged and neutral pion mass. At one-loop order this correction is directly proportional to mp±2-mp02\ensuremath{m_{\pi^\pm}^2-m_{\pi^0}^2} and free of (electromagnetic) counterterm contributions. The differential cross-section for charged pion Compton scattering p-g? p-g\ensuremath{\pi^-\gamma \rightarrow \pi^-\gamma} gets affected (in backward directions) at the level of a few permille. At the same time the isospin-breaking correction leads to a small shift of the pion polarizabilities by d(ap- bp) @ 1.3 ·10-5\ensuremath{\delta(\alpha_\pi- \beta_\pi) \simeq 1.3 \cdot 10^{-5}} fm^3. In case of the low-energy gg? p0p0\ensuremath{\gamma\gamma \rightarrow \pi^0\pi^0} reaction isospin breaking manifests itself through a cusp effect at the p+p-\ensuremath{\pi^+\pi^-} threshold. We give an improved estimate for it based on the empirical p \pi p \pi -scattering length difference a0-a2\ensuremath{a_0-a_2} .     

Dynamics of confinement and chiral symmetry breaking in the heavy-light q\bar Q system

At large N _c , the gauge-invariant Green's function of the heavy-light $q\bar Q$ system satisfies a nonlinear nonlocal equation, which is studied in detail. Chiral-symmetry breaking reveals itself through the appearance of scalar confinement at large distances. Equations for partial waves are written explicitly with perturbative Coulomb interaction taken into account, and the structure of the interaction kernel is studied semiclassically.     

Studying pion effects on the chiral phase transition

We investigate the chiral phase transition at finite temperatures and zero chemical potential with Dyson-Schwinger equations. Our truncation for the quark-gluon interaction includes mesonic degrees of freedom, which allows us to study the impact of the pions on the nature of the phase transition. Within the present scheme we find a 5% change of the critical temperature due to the pion backreaction whereas the mean field character of the transition is not changed.     

On chiral pion coupling to bags

We study the effects of the chiral symmetric boundary condition on quarks hadron bags and obtain rather restrictive conditions on models that can give reasonable values of the axial coupling constant and the pion-nucleon coupling constant. An example of a successful application is given.     

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.     

Inhomogeneous chiral symmetry breaking phases

We investigate inhomogeneous chiral symmetry breaking phases in the phase diagram of the two-flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model, concentrating on phases with one-dimensional modulations. It is found that the first-order transition line in the phase diagram of homogeneous phases gets completely covered by an inhomogeneous phase which is bordered by second-order transition lines. The inhomogeneous phase turns out to be remarkably stable when vector interactions are included.     

Chiral symmetry breaking and pion properties at finite temperatures

Spontaneous and explicit chiral symmetry breaking is analyzed in Coulomb gauge QCD at finite temperatures, using an instantaneous approximation for the quark interaction and incorporating confinement through a running coupling constant. The thermodynamics of the quarks is treated approximatively by assuming that the momentum-dependent constituent quark mass sets the scale for thermodynamic fluctuations of colour singlet excitations. We investigate the class of a temperature independent and a temperature dependent interaction between quarks. In the chiral limit both temperature independent and a smooth temperature dependent interaction yields a second order chiral phase transition with critical exponents close to the values for a BCS super-conductor. For explicit chiral symmetry breaking we find a nearly constant pion mass below the transition temperature, but a strongly overdamped mode above. For a first order deconfining transition in the gluonic sector also the quark sector shows a first order chiral phase transition. The relevance of our results for relativistic heavy ion collisions is briefly discussed.     

Viscosities in chiral symmetry breaking phase

In the chiral symmetry breaking phase described by the NJL model at quark level,along with the chiral symmetry restoration the ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density η/s drops down monotonously and reaches the minimum at the critical point,while the ratio of bulk viscosity to entropy density ζ/s behaves oppositely.     

On chiral symmetry breaking. II

We study the restrictions imposed on chiral symmetry breaking terms by a set of postulates, whose main content is furnished by certain ideas of Michel and Radicati. We then test certain particular cases by utilizing an effective Lagrangian and calculating meson-meson scattering lengths. A convenient technique for calculating traces of matrices which appear in our model is presented in an appendix.     

Massless QCD and chiral symmetry breaking

It is well known that chiral symmetry is spontaneously broken in QCD. To relate this fact to non-perturbative features of the theory, like instantons, we start with a massless lagrangian and perform a non-linear chiral colored singlet transformation on the quark fields which yields (by means of Fujikawa's method) essentially two terms in the lagrangian. First a quark mass term induced by instantons and secondly a coupling between pseudoscalar mesons and the axial anomaly. Ward-Takahashi identities can be derived. To clarify the presence of this induced mass term we calculate its first perturbative part up to the two-loop level.