Related papers: Theta vacuum physics from QCD at fixed topology
Inspired by recent lattice calculations, we model certain aspects of the $\theta$-vacuum using a matrix model with gaussian weights. The vacuum energy exhibits a cusp at $\theta <\pi$ that is sensitive to both the accuracy of the numerical…
We discuss the issue of the cosmological constant in non-commutative non-supersymmetric gauge theories. In particular, in orbifold field theories non-commutativity acts as a UV cut-off. We suggest that in these theories quantum corrections…
At small lattice spacing QCD simulations are expected to become stuck in a single topological sector. Observables evaluated in a fixed topological sector differ from their counterparts in full QCD, i.e. at unfixed topology, by volume…
We determine the topological susceptibility $ \chi_t $ in the trivial topological sector generated by lattice simulations of two-flavor QCD with overlap Dirac fermion, on a $16^3 \times 32$ lattice with lattice spacing $\sim$ 0.12 fm, at…
Similar to QCD, general relativity has a $\Theta$ sector due to large diffeomorphisms. We make explicit, for the first time, that the gravitational CP violating $\Theta$ parameter is non-perturbatively related to the cosmological constant.…
We apply the previously-developed sub-volume method to study the $\theta$-dependence of the four-dimensional SU(2) Yang-Mills theory at finite temperature. We calculate the first two coefficients, the topological susceptibility $\chi$ and…
We investigate the topological properties of $N_f = 2+1$ QCD with physical quark masses, at temperatures around 500 MeV. With the aim of obtaining a reliable sampling of topological modes in a regime where the fluctuations of the…
We present recent results on the theta-dependence of four-dimensional SU(N) gauge theories, where theta is the coefficient of the CP-violating topological term in the Lagrangian. In particular, we study the scaling behavior of these…
The dependence on the topological theta angle term in quantum field theory is usually discussed in the context of instanton calculus. There the observables are 2 pi periodic, analytic functions of theta. However, in strongly coupled…
After reviewing the cosmological constant problem - why is Lambda not huge? - I outline the two basic approaches that had emerged by the late 1980s, and note that each made a clear prediction. Precision cosmological experiments now indicate…
We consider different observational effects to test modified gravity approach involving the cosmological constant in the common description of the dark matter and the dark energy. We obtain upper limits for the cosmological constant by…
We study the topological structure of the SU(2) vacuum at zero temperature: topological susceptibility, size, shape and distance distributions of the instantons. We use a cooling algorithm based on an improved action with scale invariant…
We investigate the topological structure of the vacuum in SU(3) lattice gauge theory. We use under-relaxed cooling to remove the high-frequency fluctuations and a variety of "filters" to identify the topological charges in the resulting…
Supernovae observations strongly support the presence of a cosmological constant, but its value, which we will call apparent, is normally determined assuming that the Universe can be accurately described by a homogeneous model. Even in the…
In the QCD vacuum, the nucleon form factors receive contributions from the underlying ensemble of topological pseudoparticles, which are sensitive to a finite vacuum angle $\theta$. We use this observation to derive a novel relationship…
Topology enters in quantum field theory (qft) in multiple forms: one of the most important, in non-abelian gauge theories, being in the identification of the $\theta$ vacuum in QCD. A very relevant aspect of this connection is through the…
Recent studies have claimed that the strong $CP$ problem does not occur in QCD, proposing a new order of limits in volume and topological sectors when studying observables on the lattice. In order to shed light on this issue, we study the…
In the large N_c limit, the variables required to analyze the low energy structure of QCD in the framework of an effective field theory necessarily include the degrees of freedom of the eta'. We evaluate the decay constants of the…
The distribution of the QCD topological charge can be described by cumulants, with the lowest one being the topological susceptibility. The vacuum energy density in a theta-vacuum is the generating function for these cumulants. In this…
We study the non-perturbative renormalisation of quantum gravity in four dimensions. Taking care to disentangle physical degrees of freedom, we observe the topological nature of conformal fluctuations arising from the functional measure.…