Coupled Gauge Theories Research Articles

Regularized Weyl double copy

We propose a regularization procedure in the sourced Weyl double copy, a spinorial version of the classical double copy, such that it matches much more general results in the Kerr-Schild version. In the regularized Weyl double copy, the anti–de Sitter (AdS) and the Lifshitz black holes, which form the basis of the study of strongly coupled gauge theories at finite temperature through the AdS/CFT correspondence and its nonrelativistic generalization, become treatable. We believe that this might pave the way for finding a relation between the classical double copy and holography. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Holographic transport beyond the supergravity approximation

We set up a unified framework to efficiently compute the shear and bulk viscosities of strongly coupled gauge theories with gravitational holographic duals involving higher derivative corrections. We consider both Weyl4 corrections, encoding the finite ’t Hooft coupling corrections of the boundary theory, and Riemann2 corrections, responsible for non-equal central charges c ≠ a of the theory at the ultraviolet fixed point. Our expressions for the viscosities in higher derivative holographic models are extracted from a radially conserved current and depend only on the horizon data.

QCD with an infrared fixed point: The pion sector

The possibility that gauge theories with chiral symmetry breaking below the conformal window exhibit an infrared fixed point is explored. With this assumption three aspects of pion physics are reproduced if the quark mass anomalous dimension at the infrared fixed point is γ*=1. First, by matching the long-distance scalar adjoint correlation function. Second, by perturbing the fixed point by a small quark mass, the mq-dependence of the pion mass is reproduced by renormalization group arguments. Third, consistency of the trace anomaly and the Feynman-Hellmann theorem, for small mq, imply the same result once more. This suggests the following picture for the conformal window; close to its upper boundary γ* is zero and grows as the number of fermions is reduced until its lower boundary γ*=1 is reached, where chiral symmetry breaking sets in. Below, the strongly coupled gauge theory with γ*=1 is infrared dual to the free theory of pions. A possible dilaton sector of the scenario will be addressed in a companion paper. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Entanglement and Chaos near critical point in strongly coupled Gauge theory

We perform a holographic study of the high and low temperature behaviours of logarithmic negativity (LN) and entanglement wedge cross section (EWCS) in a large N strongly coupled thermal field theory with critical point, having a well defined gravity dual known as 1RC black hole. The bulk theory accommodates a dimensionless parameter ξ\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\\xi $$\\end{document}, proportional to the charge of the 1RC black hole. Holographically, ξ→2\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\\xi \\rightarrow 2$$\\end{document} limit ensures an existence of a critical point in the dual boundary theory. We show that the logarithmic negativity in low and high temperature limits enhances with increasing ξ\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\\xi $$\\end{document}. We analytically compute the EWCS in low and high temperature limits and find an agreement with the previously reported numerical results. We holographically explore the correlation between two identical copies of thermal field theory with critical point forming a thermofield double state (TFD) by computing the thermo mutual information (TMI). TMI shows an increasing behaviour with respect to the width of the boundary region. Furthermore, we study the chaotic behaviour of the field theory by analyzing a shock wave in the dual eternal 1 RC black hole and then estimate the degradation of TMI. The rate of such disruption of TMI slows down as the value of critical parameter ξ\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\\xi $$\\end{document} takes higher values.

Gravitational reheating at strong coupling

We use the gauge/gravity correspondence to study the gravitational reheating of strongly coupled gauge theories in the rapid exit from the long inflationary (de Sitter) phase. We estimate the maximal reheating temperature of holographic models in d-spatial dimensions, whose scale invariance is explicitly broken by a source term for an operator \U0001d4aa∆ of dimension frac{d}{2}+frac{1}{2}<Delta <d+1 , as well as the top-down \U0001d4a9 = 2* and the cascading gauge theories. The reheating is most efficient when the inflationary phase Hubble constant is much larger than the mass scale of the conformal symmetry breaking of the theory, and for theories with the conformal symmetry breaking operators that are close to marginal.

Phases of Wilson Lines in Conformal Field Theories.

We study the low-energy limit of Wilson lines (charged impurities) in conformal gauge theories in 2+1 and 3+1 dimensions. As a function of the representation of the Wilson line, certain defect operators can become marginal, leading to interesting renormalization group flows and for sufficiently large representations to complete or partial screening by charged fields. This result is universal: in large enough representations, Wilson lines are screened by the charged matter fields. We observe that the onset of the screening instability is associated with fixed-point mergers. We study this phenomenon in a variety of applications. In some cases, the screening of the Wilson lines takes place by dimensional transmutation and the generation of an exponentially large scale. We identify the space of infrared conformal Wilson lines in weakly coupled gauge theories in 3+1 dimensions and determine the screening cloud due to bosons or fermions. We also study QED in 2+1 dimensions in the large N_{f} limit and identify the nontrivial conformal Wilson lines. We briefly discuss 't Hooft lines in 3+1-dimensional gauge theories and find that they are screened in weakly coupled gauge theories with simply connected gauge groups. In non-Abelian gauge theories with S duality, this together with our analysis of the Wilson lines gives a compelling picture for the screening of the line operators as a function of the coupling.

A second Higgs near 0.5 TeV from bottom-up holographic modeling of beyond the Standard Model strong sector

One of the simplest extensions of the Standard Model (SM) consists in adding a scalar singlet. This second Higgs boson is able to solve several fundamental problems of SM. Additional scalar particles arise naturally in composite Higgs scenarios in which some confining “strong sector” beyond the SM drives the electroweak symmetry breaking. The underlying strongly coupled gauge theory may be similar to QCD and could be modeled holographically. We construct a bottom-up holographic model for description of the spectrum of composite Higgs particles. The model is based on the holographic Soft Wall model and the Wilson confinement criterion. The constructed model predicts the existence of a second Higgs boson with a mass of about 515 GeV.

Anomalies and phases of strongly coupled chiral gauge theories: Recent developments

After many years of investigations, our understanding of the dynamics of strongly coupled chiral gauge theories is still quite unsatisfactory today. Conventional wisdom about strongly coupled gauge theories, successfully applied to QCD, is not always as useful in chiral gauge theories. Recently, some new ideas and techniques have been developed, which involve concepts of generalized symmetries, of gauging a discrete center symmetry, and of generalizing the ’t Hooft anomaly matching constraints to include certain mixed symmetries. This new development has been applied to chiral gauge theories, leading to many interesting, sometimes quite unexpected, results. For instance, in the context of generalized Bars–Yankielowicz and generalized Georgi–Glashow models, these new types of anomalies give a rather clear indication in favor of the dynamical Higgs phase, against confining, flavor symmetric vacua. Another closely related topic is strong anomaly and the effective low-energy action representing it. It turns out that they have significant implications on the phase of chiral gauge theories, giving indications consistent with the findings based on the generalized anomalies. Some striking analogies and contrasts between the massless QCD and chiral gauge theories seem to emerge from these discussions. The aim of this work is to review these developments.

The asymptotic Weak Gravity Conjecture for open strings

We investigate the asymptotic Tower Weak Gravity Conjecture in weak coupling limits of open string theories with minimal supersymmetry in four dimensions, focusing for definiteness on gauge theories realized on 7-branes in F-theory. Contrary to expectations, we find that not all weak coupling limits contain an obvious candidate for a tower of states marginally satisfying the super-extremality bound. The weak coupling limits are classified geometrically in the framework of EFT string limits and their generalizations. We find three different classes of weak coupling limits, whose physics is characterized by the ratio of the magnetic weak gravity scale and the species scale. The four-dimensional Tower Weak Gravity Conjecture is satisfied by the (non-BPS) excitations of the weakly coupled EFT string only in emergent string limits, where the EFT string can be identified with a critical (heterotic) string. All other weak coupling limits lead to a decompactification either to an in general strongly coupled gauge theory coupled to gravity or to a defect gauge theory decoupling from the gravitational bulk, in agreement with the absence of an obvious candidate for a marginally super-extremal tower of states.

Asymptotic safety guaranteed for strongly coupled gauge theories

We demonstrate that interacting ultraviolet fixed points in four dimensions exist at strong coupling, and away from large-$N$ Veneziano limits. This is established exemplarily for semi-simple supersymmetric gauge theories with chiral matter and superpotential interactions by using the renormalisation group and exact methods from supersymmetry. We determine the entire superconformal window of ultraviolet fixed points as a function of field multiplicities. Results are in accord with the $a$-theorem, bounds on conformal charges, Seiberg duality, and unitary. We also find manifolds of Leigh-Strassler models exhibiting lines of infrared fixed points. At weak coupling, findings are confirmed using perturbation theory up to three loop. Benchmark models with low field multiplicities are provided including examples with Standard~Model-like gauge sectors. Implications for particle physics, model building, and conformal field theory are indicated.

Lattice Computations for Beyond Standard Model Physics

Understanding the dynamics of strongly coupled non-Abelian gauge theories constitutes one of the ongoing grand challenges in theoretical physics. This has been motivated by the need to understand long-distance behavior of quantum chromodynamics, and by the possible phenomenological applications in dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking or strongly coupled and composite dark sectors. In this review, we start by briefly outlining these motivations, and then discuss how first principle lattice methods have been adapted to provide results on vacuum phase diagrams of strongly coupled gauge theories with different gauge groups and various fermion representations.

Holographic evolution with dynamical boundary gravity

Holography has provided valuable insights into the time evolution of strongly coupled gauge theories in a fixed spacetime. However, this framework is insufficient if this spacetime is dynamical. We present a scheme to evolve a four-dimensional, strongly interacting gauge theory coupled to four-dimensional dynamical gravity in the semiclassical regime. As in previous work, we use holography to evolve the quantum gauge theory stress tensor, whereas the four-dimensional metric evolves according to Einstein’s equations coupled to the expectation value of the stress tensor. The novelty of our approach is that both the boundary and the bulk spacetimes are constructed dynamically, one time step at a time. We focus on Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker geometries and evolve far-from-equilibrium initial states that lead to asymptotically expanding, flat or collapsing Universes.

RG of GR from on-shell amplitudes

We study the renormalization group of generic effective field theories that include gravity. We follow the on-shell amplitude approach, which provides a simple and efficient method to extract anomalous dimensions avoiding complications from gauge redundancies. As an invaluable tool we introduce a modified helicity tilde{h} under which gravitons carry one unit instead of two. With this modified helicity we easily explain old and uncover new non-renormalization theorems for theories including gravitons. We provide complete results for the one-loop gravitational renormalization of a generic minimally coupled gauge theory with scalars and fermions and all orders in MPl, as well as for the renormalization of dimension-six operators including at least one graviton, all up to four external particles.

Dynamical fixed points in holography

Typically, an interactive system evolves towards thermal equilibrium, with hydrodynamics representing a universal framework for its late-time dynamics. Classification of the dynamical fixed points (DFPs) of a driven Quantum Field Theory (with time dependent coupling constants, masses, external background fields, etc.) is unknown. We use holographic framework to analyze such fixed points in one example of strongly coupled gauge theory, driven by homogeneous and isotropic expansion of the background metric — equivalently, a late-time dynamics of the corresponding QFT in Friedmann-Lemaitre­Robertson-Walker Universe. We identify DFPs that are perturbatively stable, and those that are perturbatively unstable, computing the spectrum of the quasinormal modes in the corresponding holographic dual. We further demonstrate that a stable DFP can be unstable non-perturbatively, and explain the role of the entanglement entropy density as a litmus test for a non-perturbative stability. Finally, we demonstrated that a driven evolution might not have a fixed point at all: the entanglement entropy density of a system can grow without bounds.

Holography of Strongly Coupled Gauge Theories

The "periodic table" of strongly coupled gauge theories remains only sketchily understood. Holography has developed to the point where bottom up constructions can describe the spectrum of individual gauge theories (based on assumptions of their running) including quarks in different representations and higher dimension operators. I highlight the method with a "perfected" version of an AdS dual of QCD and results for composite higgs models with two representations of quarks. The method raises questions about the degree to which energy scales can be split in generic gauge theories including whether confinement and chiral symmetry breaking are linked.

Compositeness above the electroweak scale and a proposed test at LHCb

I review attempts to construct models of partial compositeness from strongly coupled gauge theories. A few minimal assumptions allow one to isolate a small number of representative models. After presenting the main idea, I discuss a recent proposal to detect a light pseudo-scalar, predicted in all these models, at the LHCb detector.

Entropic order parameters in weakly coupled gauge theories

The entropic order parameters measure in a universal geometric way the statistics of non-local operators responsible for generalized symmetries. In this article, we compute entropic order parameters in weakly coupled gauge theories. To perform this computation, the natural route of evaluating expectation values of physical (smeared) non-local operators is prevented by known difficulties in constructing suitable smeared Wilson loops. We circumvent this problem by studying the smeared non-local class operators in the enlarged non-gauge invariant Hilbert space. This provides a generic approach for smeared operators in gauge theories and explicit formulas at weak coupling. In this approach, the Wilson and ’t Hooft loops are labeled by the full weight and co-weight lattices respectively. We study generic Lie groups and discuss couplings with matter fields. Smeared magnetic operators, as opposed to the usual infinitely thin ones, have expectation values that approach one at weak coupling. The corresponding entropic order parameter saturates to its maximum topological value, except for an exponentially small correction, which we compute. On the other hand, smeared ’t Hooft loops and their entropic disorder parameter are exponentially small. We verify that both behaviors match the certainty relation for the relative entropies. In particular, we find upper and lower bounds (that differ by a factor of 2) for the exact coefficient of the linear perimeter law for thin loops at weak coupling. This coefficient is unphysical/non-universal for line operators. We end with some comments regarding the RG flows of entropic parameters through perturbative beta functions.

The Weak Gravity Conjecture and axion strings

Strong (sublattice or tower) formulations of the Weak Gravity Conjecture (WGC) imply that, if a weakly coupled gauge theory exists, a tower of charged particles drives the theory to strong coupling at an ultraviolet scale well below the Planck scale. This tower can consist of low-spin states, as in Kaluza-Klein theory, or high-spin states, as with weakly-coupled strings. We provide a suggestive bottom-up argument based on the mild p-form WGC that, for any gauge theory coupled to a fundamental axion through a θF ∧ F term, the tower is a stringy one. The charge-carrying string states at or below the WGC scale gMPl are simply axion strings for θ, with charged modes arising from anomaly inflow. Kaluza-Klein theories evade this conclusion and postpone the appearance of high-spin states to higher energies because they lack a θF ∧ F term. For abelian Kaluza-Klein theories, modified arguments based on additional abelian groups that interact with the Kaluza-Klein gauge group sometimes pinpoint a mass scale for charged strings. These arguments reinforce the Emergent String and Distant Axionic String Conjectures. We emphasize the unproven assumptions and weak points of the arguments, which provide interesting targets for further work. In particular, a sharp characterization of when gauge fields admit θF ∧ F couplings and when they do not would be immensely useful for particle phenomenology and for clarifying the implications of the Weak Gravity Conjecture.

Confronting the magnetically-induced holographic composite inflation with observation

We study the observational predictions of the phenomenological anti-de Sitter (AdS)/QCD inspired model, in which the inflaton field emerges in a four-dimensional strongly coupled gauge theory, in which the chiral symmetry breaking occurs through the formation of the quark condensate. Based on a top-down approach of AdS/QCD, using a D7-brane in the background of ${N}_{c}$ D3-branes, it has already been shown that chiral symmetry breaking in a magnetic field through the generation of the Higgs vacuum expectation value could be a second-order phase transition, although it was doubted that this scenario could lead to enough inflation. Using an iterative method, we consistently solve for the time-dependent parameters, including the embedding function of the D7-brane and the Hubble parameter of the expanding background. We show that with ${N}_{c}\ensuremath{\sim}{10}^{7}$ and ${g}_{\mathrm{UV}}\ensuremath{\sim}\mathrm{few}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}0.1$, the predictions of the inflationary model are consistent with the most stringent constraints placed on the inflationary models by Planck 2018. Although the model is capable of producing a large amount of gravitational waves, $r\ensuremath{\simeq}0.01$, the displacement of the canonical mass dimension-1 scalar field remains below the Planck mass, in violation of the Lyth bound.

Fate of false vacua in holographic first-order phase transitions

Using the holographic correspondence as a tool, we study the dynamics of first-order phase transitions in strongly coupled gauge theories at finite temperature. Considering an evolution from the large to the small temperature phase, we compute the nucleation rate of bubbles of true vacuum in the metastable phase. For this purpose, we find the relevant configurations (bounces) interpolating between the vacua and we compute the related effective actions. We start by revisiting the compact Randall-Sundrum model at high temperature. Using holographic renormalization, we compute the derivative term in the effective bounce action, that was missing in the literature. Then, we address the full problem within the top-down Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto model. It displays both a confinement/deconfinement and a chiral symmetry breaking/restoration phase transition which, depending on the model parameters, can happen at different critical temperatures. For the confinement/deconfinement case we perform the numerical analysis of an effective description of the transition and also provide analytic expressions using thick and thin wall approximations. For the chiral symmetry transition, we implement a variational approach that allows us to address the challenging non-linear problem stemming from the Dirac-Born-Infeld action.