Related papers: QCD at Large $\theta$ Angle and Axion Cosmology
The chiral condensate, which is constant in vacuum, may become spatially modulated at moderately high densities where in the traditional picture of the QCD phase diagram a first-order chiral phase transition occurs. We review the current…
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…
Precise measurement of the $\pi\pi$-phase shift $\delta^0_0(E)$ at very low energies would provide, for the first time, the experimental evidence in favour of or against the existence of a large quark condensate in the QCD vacuum, which is…
We calculate the $\theta$ dependence in a cousin of QCD, where the vacuum structure can be analyzed exactly. The theory is $\mathcal{N}=2$ $SU(2)$ gauge theory with $N_F=0,1,2,3$ flavors of fundamentals, explicitly broken to $\mathcal{N}=1$…
QCD with N_f=2 is a specially interesting system to investigate the chiral transition. The order of the transition has still not been established. We report the results of an in-depth numerical investigation performed with staggered…
I review some aspects of the interplay between anomalies and chiral symmetry. The quantum anomaly that breaks the U(1) axial symmetry of massless QCD leaves behind a flavor-singlet discrete chiral invariance. When the mass is turned on this…
We study QCD vacuum structure with the topological $\theta$ angle using a recently proposed semiclassical approach on $\mathbb{R}^2 \times T^2$ with the 't Hooft and baryon magnetic fluxes. Under the assumption of adiabatic continuity in…
We analyze the impact of the $\theta$-angle and axion dynamics for two-color (in fact any $Sp(2N)$) QCD at nonzero baryon charge and as a function of the number of matter fields on the vacuum properties, the pattern of chiral symmetry…
We use the two-flavor Linear Sigma Model with quarks as an effective description of QCD to investigate the nature of the chiral phase transition at finite baryon chemical potential and zero temperature. We work at one-loop order to set up…
QCD was shown to have a nontrivial vacuum structure due to the topology of the theta = theta+2*pi*n parameter. As a result of this nontrivial topology, in the large N_c limit, quasi-stable QCD domain walls appear, characterized by a…
The order of the phase transition in finite-temperature QCD with two degenerate light quarks is still an open problem and corresponds to the last question mark in the zero-density phase diagram of QCD. We argue that establishing the nature…
We clarify the conditions of the cosmic quantum chromodynamics (QCD) first-order phase transition in the early universe by carefully distinguishing the chiral and deconfinement phase transitions. While the chiral one with light quarks at…
We investigate the topological properties of $N_f = 2+1$ QCD with physical quark masses, both at zero and finite temperature. We adopt stout improved staggered fermions and explore a range of lattice spacings $a \sim 0.05 - 0.12$ fm. At…
Effective Lagrangians for Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) especially suited for understanding deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration at nonzero temperature and matter density are reviewed. These effective theories allow one to study…
We will report recent progress on the QCD phase diagram at finite temperature and density. In particular, we discuss the universal scaling of the chiral transition in the limit of two massless quarks and one strange quark. We also discuss…
To quantify the universal properties of chiral phase transition in (2+1)-flavor QCD, we use an improved, renormalized order parameter for the chiral symmetry breaking. We construct ratios of this divergence-free order parameter from its…
We consider QCD at Theta ~ Pi with two, one and zero light flavours Nf, using the Di Vecchia-Veneziano-Witten effective lagrangian. For Nf=2, we show that CP is spontaneously broken at Theta = Pi for finite quark mass splittings, z= Md/Mu…
The quantum anomaly that breaks the U(1) axial symmetry of massless multi-flavored QCD leaves behind a discrete flavor-singlet chiral invariance. With massive quarks, this residual symmetry has a close connection with the strong…
In an effective Lagrangian approach to QCD we nonperturbatively calculate an analytic approximation to the decay rate of a false vacuum per unit volume, $\Gamma/V$. We do so for both zero and high temperature theories. This result is…
We give a brief introduction on finite temperature phase transitions in lattice QCD including a discussion on the identification of first order transitions. We present a study of the deconfinement phase transition of one-flavour QCD, using…