Related papers: Flavour Stability of the Chiral Vacuum and Scalar …
Multi-flavour (N_f>=3) Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT) may exhibit instabilities due to vacuum fluctuations of sea q-bar q pairs. Keeping the fluctuations small would require a very precise fine-tuning of the low-energy constants L_4 and…
Chiral symmetry restoration at nonzero temperature and quark densities are investigated in the framework of a linear sigma model with N_f=3 light quark flavors. After the derivation of the grand potential in mean-field approximation, the…
The relation between the chiral quark condensate in QCD sum rules and chiral perturbation theory is clarified with the help of a low-energy theorem for the scalar and pseudoscalar correlation functions. It is found that the quark condensate…
We outline the extension of the globally chirally invariant Nf = 2 linear sigma model with vector and axial-vector degrees of freedom to Nf=3. We present preliminary results concerning the scalar meson masses.
We study the transition between spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking and conformal behavior in the SU(3) theory with multiple fermion flavors. Instead of the traditional approach of changing the number of flavors, we keep the number of…
The mass sensitivity of the chiral phase transition of QCD with and without axial $U_A(1)$-symmetry breaking at vanishing and finite quark chemical potential is investigated. To focus on the low-energy sector of QCD, a quark-meson model…
It was recently conjectured that, in SU(3) gauge theories with fundamental quarks, valence spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking is equivalent to condensation of local dynamical chirality and appearance of chiral polarization scale…
We discuss the tension between discrete flavour symmetries and extended scalar sectors arising from lepton flavour violation experiments. The key point is that extended scalar sectors will generically lead to flavour changing neutral…
We present new results on chiral symmetry breaking in nearly conformal gauge theories with fermions in the fundamental representation of the SU(3) color gauge group. The number of fermion flavors is varied in an extended range below the…
Results are reviewed, which provide relations between the response (and eventual instability) of the chiral QCD vacuum to an increase of the number of massless quarks in the theory and the observed violations of the large $N_c$ expansion in…
The SU(3) flavour symmetry breaking expansion in up, down and strange quark masses is extended from hadron masses to meson decay constants. This allows a determination of the ratio of kaon to pion decay constants in QCD. Furthermore when…
Chiral symmetry breaking may exhibit significantly different patterns in two chiral limits: N_f=2 massless flavours (m_u=m_d=0, m_s physical) and N_f=3 massless flavours (m_u=m_d=0=m_s=0). Such a difference may arise due to vacuum…
We study scalar, pseudoscalar, vector, and axial-vector mesons with non-strange and strange quantum numbers in the framework of a linear sigma model with global chiral $U(N_f)_L \times U(N_f)_R$ symmetry. We perform a global fit of meson…
We first review the recent accumulating evidences of the existence of a scalar-isoscalar meson with the mass 500 to 800 MeV which may be identified with the sigma meson as the quantum fluctuation of the amplitude of the chiral order…
Due to its light mass of order Lambda_QCD, the strange quark can play a special role in Chiral Symmetry Breaking (ChSB): differences in the pattern of ChSB in the limits N_f=2 (m_u,m_d->0, m_s physical) and N_f=3 (m_u,m_d,m_s->0) may arise…
We present a $U(4)_R \times U(4)_L$ chirally symmetric model, which in addition to scalar and pseudoscalar mesons also includes vector and axial-vector mesons. A part from the three new parameters pertaining to the charm degree of freedom,…
We discuss scalar mesons properties on the light of chiral dynamics. Considering them as the chiral partners of pseudo-scalar mesons we propose an explanation to their unusual properties based on non-trivial vacuum effects coming from the…
A comparison of the linear sigma model (L$\sigma$M) and Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT) predictions for pion and kaon dynamics is presented. Lowest and next-to-leading order terms in the ChPT amplitudes are reproduced if one restricts to…
After a brief overview of the realization of chiral symmetry in hot and/or dense medium, the implications of the existence of a light scalar-isoscalar meson (which we call $\sigma$ throughout this report) are discussed in the vacuum and in…
The first order chiral phase transition for quark matter with flavor imbalance is studied using the Linear sigma model with quarks, also known as Quark-meson model. Special attention is paid to the role of the scalar isovector meson. The…