Related papers: On the baryon-color-flavor (BCF) anomaly in vector…
We study the mixed anomaly between the discrete chiral symmetry and general baryon-color-flavor (BCF) backgrounds in $SU(N_c)$ gauge theories with $N_f$ flavors of Dirac fermions in representations ${\cal R}_c$ of $N$-ality $n_c$,…
We critically reconsider the argument based on 't Hooft anomaly matching that aims at proving chiral symmetry breaking in confining four-dimensional QCD-like theories with $N_c>2$ colors and $N_f$ flavors. The main line of reasoning relies…
We study the effective field theory for fermions in the color-flavor locked (CFL) phase of high density QCD. The effective theory contains a flavor nonet of baryons interacting with a nonet of pseudoscalar Goldstone bosons as well as a…
In this paper, we study the baryons and solitons of chiral and vector-like $SU(N)$ gauge theories with matter in mixed one and two-index representations. Focusing on the Color-flavor locked (CFL) phase, we compute the topology of the coset…
In a large class of chiral gauge theories in four dimensions it was found that certain natural assumption about the bifermion condensates leads to the infrared effective theory where the 't Hooft anomaly matching conditions are satisfied in…
We discuss consequences of the 't Hooft anomaly matching condition for Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) with massless fundamental quarks. We derive the new discrete 't Hooft anomaly of massless QCD for generic numbers of color $N_\mathrm{c}$…
We present a simple argument which seems to favor, when applied to a large class of strongly-coupled chiral gauge theories, a dynamical-Higgs-phase scenario, characterized by certain bifermion condensates. Flavor symmetric confining vacua…
We study the dynamics of $SU(N)$ chiral gauge theories with massless fermions belonging to various combinations of the symmetric, antisymmetric or fundamental representations. We limit ourselves to the gauge-anomaly-free and asymptotically…
In the Standard Model, baryon number is an accidental symmetry, whose violation would constitute unambiguous evidence of new physics, with proton decay providing its most prominent experimental signature. At the same time, the peculiar…
The generalization of QCD to many colors is not unique; each distinct choice corresponds to a distinct 1/N_c expansion. The familiar 't Hooft N_c -> \infty limit places quarks in the fundamental representation of SU(N_c), while an…
We study $SU(N_c)$ gauge theories with Dirac fermions in representations ${\cal{R}}$ of nonzero $N$-ality, coupled to axions. These theories have an exact discrete chiral symmetry, which has a mixed 't Hooft anomaly with general…
We discuss the phenomenology of effective field theories with new scalar or vector representations of the Standard Model quark flavor symmetry group, allowing for large flavor breaking involving the third generation. Such field content can…
We consider flavor breaking in the the octet and decuplet baryon masses at second order in large-$N$ chiral perturbation theory, where $N$ is the number of QCD colors. We assume that $1/N \sim 1/N_F \sim m_s / \Lambda \gg m_{u,d}/\Lambda,…
Common lore suggests that $N$-color QCD with massive quarks has no useful order parameters which can be non-trivial at zero baryon density. However, such order parameters do exist when there are $n_f$ quark flavors with a common mass and…
Non-trivial 't Hooft anomaly obstructs the existence of a simple symmetric conformal boundary condition in a CFT. Conversely, there is a common piece of lore that trivial 't Hooft anomaly promises the existence of a simple symmetry…
't Hooft anomaly matching is powerful for constraining the low energy phases of gauge theories. In 3d one common anomaly is the parity anomaly in a $T$-symmetric theory where one cannot gauge the global symmetry group without breaking the…
A domain-wall configuration of the $\eta'$ meson bounded by a string (called a pancake or a Hall droplet) is recently proposed to describe the baryons with spin $N_c/2$. In order to understand its baryon number as well as the flavor quantum…
We study a strongly coupled $Z_2$ lattice gauge theory with two flavors of quarks, invariant under an exact $\mathrm{SU}(2)\times \mathrm{SU}(2) \times \mathrm{U}_A(1) \times \mathrm{U}_B(1)$ symmetry which is the same as QCD with two…
Recent lattice evidence suggests the chiral phase transition in QCD is second-order for $N_f \ge 2$ massless flavors. We constrain CFT descriptions of a critical line in temperature $T$ and imaginary baryon chemical potential $\theta_B =…
We study the bilinear and higher-order fermion condensates in $4$-dimensional $SU(N)$ gauge theories with a single Dirac fermion in a general representation. Augmented with a mixed anomaly between the $0$-form discrete chiral, $1$-form…