English

Chiral symmetry breaking as open string tachyon condensation

High Energy Physics - Theory 2008-11-26 v1 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We consider a general framework to study holographically the dynamics of fundamental quarks in a confining gauge theory. Flavors are introduced by placing a set of (coincident) branes and antibranes on a background dual to a confining color theory. The spectrum contains an open string tachyon and its condensation describes the U(N_f)_L x U(N_f)_R -> U(N_f)_V symmetry breaking. By studying worldvolume gauge transformations of the flavor brane action, we obtain the QCD global anomalies and an IR condition that allows to fix the quark condensate in terms of the quark mass. We find the expected N_f^2 Goldstone bosons (for m_q=0), the Gell-Mann-Oakes-Renner relation (for m_q small) and the \eta' mass. Remarkably, the linear confinement behavior for the masses of highly excited spin-1 mesons, m_n^2 ~ n is naturally reproduced.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/0702155,
  title  = {Chiral symmetry breaking as open string tachyon condensation},
  author = {Roberto Casero and Elias Kiritsis and Angel Paredes},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/0702155},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

30 pages + 5 appendices, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-22T15:40:59.063Z