Phases of chiral gauge theories

Abstract

We discuss the behavior of two non-supersymmetric chiral SU(N) gauge theories, involving fermions in the symmetric and antisymmetric two-index tensor representations respectively. In addition to global anomaly matching, we employ a recently proposed inequality constraint on the number of effective low energy (massless) degrees of freedom of a theory, based on the thermodynamic free energy. Several possible zero temperature phases are consistent with the constraints. A simple picture for the phase structure emerges if these theories choose the phase, consistent with global anomaly matching, that minimizes the massless degree of freedom count defined through the free energy. This idea suggests that confinement with the preservation of the global symmetries through the formation of massless composite fermions is in general not preferred. While our discussion is restricted mainly to bilinear condensate formation, higher dimensional condensates are considered for one case. We conclude by commenting briefly on two related supersymmetric chiral theories.