Related papers: On cusps in the $\eta'$ potential
We study the large $N$ $\theta$ dependence and the $\eta^\prime$ potential in supersymmetric QCD with small soft SUSY-breaking terms. Known exact results in SUSY QCD are found to reflect a variety of expectations from large $N$ perturbation…
In ordinary QCD with light, degenerate, fundamental flavors, $CP$ symmetry is spontaneously broken at $\theta=\pi$, and domain wall solutions connecting the vacua can be constructed in chiral perturbation theory. In some cases the breaking…
We review arguments that supersymmetric QCD with $N$ colors and $N_f \ge 0$ massive quarks confines. We explain that this remains the case for small soft breakings and small supersymmetric masses for any quarks. These results continue to…
We examine the phase structure of a QCD-like theory at $\bar\theta =\pi$ obtained from supersymmetric $SU(N)$ QCD perturbed by a small amount of supersymmetry breaking via anomaly mediation (AMSB QCD). The spectrum of this theory matches…
Recent interest in novel phases in high density QCD motivates the study of high density supersymmetric QCD (SQCD), where powerful exact results for supersymmetric gauge theories can be brought to bear in the strongly coupled regime. We…
We investigate the dynamics responsible for generating the potential of the $\eta'$, the (would-be) Goldstone boson associated with the anomalous axial $U(1)$ symmetry of QCD. The standard lore posits that pure QCD dynamics generates a…
We compute anomalous dimensions of quartic operators which are singlets under the $\mathrm{U}(N_f)$ global symmetry in Yang-Mills theories with Chern-Simons level $k$ in three dimensions coupled to $N_f$ Dirac fermions. In order to have…
We model the Fermi surface of the cuprates by one-dimensional nested parts near $(0,\pi)$ and $(\pi,0)$ and unnested parts near the zone diagonals. Fermions in the nested regions form 1D spin liquids, and develop spectral gaps below some…
Our recent works revisit the proof of chiral symmetry breaking in the confining phase of four-dimensional QCD-like theories, i.e. $SU(N_c)$ gauge theories with $N_f$ flavors of vectorlike quarks in the fundamental representation. The…
In gauge theories with fundamental matter there is typically no sharp way to distinguish confining and Higgs regimes, e.g. using generalized global symmetries acting on loop order parameters. It is standard lore that these two regimes are…
We study QCD with massless quarks on $\mathbb{R}^3\times S^1$ under symmetry-twisted boundary conditions with small compactification radius, i.e. at high temperatures. Under suitable boundary conditions, the theory acquires a part of the…
The phase structure of QCD-like gauge theories with fermions in various representations is an interesting but generally analytically intractable problem. One way to ensure weak coupling is to define the theory in a small finite volume, in…
We introduce in supersymmetric QCD with $N_f<N$ additional meson singlet degrees of freedom made of $2N_f-2$ supermultiplets. We construct an alternative superpotential with $N_f^2$ constraints and show its consistency. Based on this…
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…
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 show that $2$d adjoint QCD, an $SU(N)$ gauge theory with one massless adjoint Majorana fermion, has a variety of mixed 't Hooft anomalies. The anomalies are derived using a recent mod $2$ index theorem and its generalization that…
We investigate and elucidate the phase structure of QCD for general number of flavors $N_F$ with Wilson quarks, varying $N_F$ from 2 up to 300. Based on numerical results combined with the result of the perturbation theory we propose the…
We present a careful study of the chiral symmetry breaking minima and the baryonic directions in supersymmetric QCD ($SU(N_c)$ with $N_f$ flavors) perturbed by Anomaly Mediated Supersymmetry Breaking (AMSB). For the s-confining case of $N_f…
We consider N =1 supersymmetric QCD with the gauge group U(N) and N_f=N quark flavors. To get rid of flat directions we add a meson superfield. The theory has no adjoint fields and, therefore, no 't Hooft-Polyakov monopoles in the…
A set of non-supersymmetric minimal area embeddings of an M-theory 5-brane are considered. The field theories on the surface of the 5-brane have the field content of N=2 SQCD with fundamental representation matter fields. By suitable choice…