Chiral vacuum alignment and spontaneousCPviolation by four-Fermi operators

Abstract

In models where there is a global chiral symmetry which spontaneously breaks to its vectorial subgroup, the introduction of an explicit symmetry breaking perturbation will define the true vacuum of the theory. This true vacuum is found via the minimization of the expectation value of the perturbing Hamiltonian between different vacua as prescribed by Dashen. The procedure of finding the correct vacuum of the theory may result in the spontaneous breaking of CP symmetry even if one initially demands CP invariance on the perturbation. In this work we study, in detail, models where the perturbation is provided by four-Fermi operators. We present the exact treatment for models with two fermion flavors and study the three flavor case in depth numerically. We show that after the Dashen procedure is applied the solutions for the true vacuum fall in three classes with different CP breaking patterns. Critical transitions are possible between these classes as one varies the parameters of the perturbation. We rigorously show that at these transitions a pseudo-Goldstone boson mass vanishes. We also advocate, and substantiate with numerical statistical analysis for various types of models, that if one imposes CP invariance on the perturbation before solving the vacuum alignment, themore » resulting vacuum structure will have a sizable probability for a light pseudo-Goldstone boson mass. That is a statistical variant of Peccei-Quinn mechanism can be speculated to operate.« less