Related papers: QCD at \theta \sim \pi
We use the chiral Lagrangian to investigate the global properties of the $N$-flavor QCD vacuum as a function of the $\theta$ parameter. In the case of exact quark degeneracy we find evidence for first order phase transitions at $\theta =…
We study QCD with two colors and quarks in the fundamental representation at finite baryon density in the limit of light quark masses. In this limit the free energy of this theory reduces to the free energy of a chiral Lagrangian which is…
This paper addresses two aspects concerning the $\theta$-vacuum of Quantum Chromodynamics. First, large-$N_c$ chiral perturbation theory is used to calculate the first two non-trivial cumulants of the distribution of the winding number,…
We describe the low energy excitations of the diquark condensates in the color-flavor locked phase of QCD with three massless flavors, at high baryon densities, in terms of a non-linear effective lagrangian. Such a lagrangian is formally…
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…
We suggest an anomalous effective Lagrangian which reproduces the anomalous conformal and chiral Ward identities and topological charge quantization in QCD. It is shown that the large N_c Di Vecchia-Veneziano-Witten effective chiral…
I discuss the global structure of the strongly interacting gauge theory of quarks and gluons as a function of the quark masses and the CP violating parameter $\theta$. I concentrate on whether a first order phase transition occurs at…
We revisit two-color, two-flavor chiral perturbation theory at finite isospin and baryon density. We investigate the phase diagram obtained varying the isospin and the baryon chemical potentials, focusing on the phase transition occurring…
The delta-regime of QCD is characterised by light quarks in a small spatial box, but a large extent in (Euclidean) time. In this setting a specific variant of chiral perturbation theory - the delta-expansion - applies, based on a quantum…
We investigate the dependence of the QCD vacuum structure on the $\theta$-angle and quark mass, using the Di-Vecchia--Veneziano model. Although the Di-Vecchia--Veneziano model is a chiral effective model, it contains the topological…
We compute derivatives of thermodynamic quantities with respect to $\mu$, at $\mu=0$ for 2 and 3 flavors of degenerate quark masses. This allows us to estimate the phase transition line in the $T,\mu$ plane and quantify the influence of a…
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 $\mathcal{N}=1$…
The chiral symmetry of QCD with two massless quark flavours gets restored in a non-analytic chiral phase transition at finite temperature and zero density. Whether this is a first-order or a second-order transition has not yet been…
I discuss the mass parameters appearing in the gauge theory of the strong interactions, concentrating on the two flavor case. I show how the effect of the CP violating parameter $\theta$ is simply interpreted in terms of the state of the…
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…
The partition function of QCD is analyzed for an arbitrary number of flavors, N_f, and arbitrary quark masses including the contributions from all topological sectors in the Leutwyler--Smilga regime. For given N_f and arbitrary vacuum…
We investigate the QCD chiral phase transition at finite chemical potential $\mu$, using the renormalization group (RG) to characterize the infrared behavior of sigma models constrained by the flavor and spacetime symmetries. The results…
We derive the chiral effective Lagrangian for heavy-light mesons in the heavy quark limit from QCD under proper approximations. The low energy constants in the effective Lagrangian are expressed in terms of the light quark self-energy. With…
In this work, we attack the problem of "chiral phase instability" ($\chi$PI) in a quantum chromodynamics (QCD) system under a parallel and constant electromagnetic field. The $\chi$PI refers to that: When $I_2\equiv{\bf E\cdot B}$ is larger…
We explore the possibility that QCD may undergo a phase transition as a function of the strange quark mass. This would hint towards models with ``spontaneous color symmetry breaking'' in the vacuum. For two light quark flavors we classify…