Non-perturbative Interactions Research Articles

Non-perturbative Heavy-Flavor Transport at RHIC and LHC

We calculate open heavy-flavor (HF) transport in relativistic heavy-ion collisions by applying a strong-coupling treatment in both macro- and microscopic dynamics (hydrodynamics and non-perturbative diffusion interactions). The hydrodynamic medium evolution is quantitatively constrained by bulk and multi-strange hadron spectra and elliptic flow. The heavy quark transport coefficient is evaluated from a non-perturbative T-matrix approach in the Quark–Gluon Plasma which, close to the critical temperature, leads to resonance formation and feeds into the recombination of heavy quarks on a hydrodynamic hypersurface. In the hadronic phase, the diffusion of HF mesons is obtained from effective hadronic theory. We compute observables at RHIC and LHC for non-photonic electrons and HF mesons, respectively.

STUDIES OF NUCLEON RESONANCE STRUCTURE IN EXCLUSIVE MESON ELECTROPRODUCTION

Studies of the structure of excited baryons are key factors to the N* program at Jefferson Lab (JLab). Within the first year of data taking with the Hall B CLAS12 detector following the 12 GeV upgrade, a dedicated experiment will aim to extract the N* electrocouplings at high photon virtualities Q2. This experiment will allow exploration of the structure of N* resonances at the highest photon virtualities ever achieved, with a kinematic reach up to Q2 = 12 GeV 2. This high-Q2 reach will make it possible to probe the excited nucleon structures at distance scales ranging from where effective degrees of freedom, such as constituent quarks, are dominant through the transition to where nearly massless bare-quark degrees of freedom are relevant. In this document, we present a detailed description of the physics that can be addressed through N* structure studies in exclusive meson electroproduction. The discussion includes recent advances in reaction theory for extracting N* electrocouplings from meson electroproduction off protons, along with Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD)-based approaches to the theoretical interpretation of these fundamental quantities. This program will afford access to the dynamics of the nonperturbative strong interaction responsible for resonance formation, and will be crucial in understanding the nature of confinement and dynamical chiral symmetry breaking in baryons, and how excited nucleons emerge from QCD.

Measurement of the cross-section for W boson production in association with b-jets in pp collisions at $ \sqrt{s}=7 $ TeV with the ATLAS detector

Abstract This paper reports a measurement of the W +b-jets (W +b+ X and W + $ b\overline{b} $ +X) production cross-section in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV at the LHC. These results are based on data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.6 fb−1, collected with the ATLAS detector. Cross-sections are presented as a function of jet multiplicity and of the transverse momentum of the leading b-jet for both the muon and electron decay modes of the W boson. The W +b-jets cross-section, corrected for all known detector effects, is quoted in a limited kinematic range. Combining the muon and electron channels, the fiducial cross-section for W +b-jets is measured to be 7.1 ± 0.5 (stat) ± 1.4 (syst) pb, consistent with the next-to-leading order QCD prediction, corrected for non-perturbative and double-parton interactions (DPI) contributions, of 4.70 ± 0.09 (stat) $ _{-0.49}^{+0.60 } $ (scale) ±0.06 (PDF) ±0.16 (non-pert) $ _{-0.38}^{+0.52 } $ (DPI) pb.

Ferromagnetism in Itinerant Two-Dimensionalt2gSystems

Motivated by the recent indications of ferromagnetism in transition metal oxide heterostructures, we propose a possible mechanism to generate ferromagnetism for itinerant t(2g) systems in two spatial dimensions that does not rely on the coupling between local moments and conduction electrons. We particularly emphasize the orbital nature of different bands and show that when the Fermi level lies near the bottom of the upper bands, a nonperturbative interaction effect due to the quasi-one-dimensional nature of the upper bands may drive a transition to a state in which the upper bands are ferromagnetically polarized. In the quasi-one-dimensional limit, the full thermodynamics may be obtained exactly. We discuss the connection between our mechanism with several itinerant t(2g) systems that may have ferromagnetic instabilities.

Recent development in SU(3) covariant baryon chiral perturbation theory

Baryon chiral perturbation theory (BChPT), as an effective field theory of low-energy quantum chromodynamics (QCD), has played and is still playing an important role in our understanding of non-perturbative strong interaction phenomena. In the past two decades, inspired by the rapid progress in lattice QCD simulations and the new experimental campaign to study the strangeness sector of low-energy QCD, many efforts have been made to develop a fully covariant BChPT and to test its validity in all scenarios. These new endeavours have not only deepened our understanding of some long-standing problems, such as the power-counting-breaking problem and the convergence problem, but also resulted in theoretical tools that can be confidently applied to make robust predictions. Particularly, the manifestly covariant BChPT supplemented with the extended-on-mass-shell (EOMS) renormalization scheme has been shown to satisfy all analyticity and symmetry constraints and converge relatively faster compared to its non-relativistic and infrared counterparts. In this article, we provide a brief review of the fully covariant BChPT and its latest applications in the $u$, $d$, and $s$ three-flavor sector.

Spectral Shifts of Nonadiabatic High-Order Harmonic Generation

High-order harmonic generation (HHG) is a nonlinear nonperturbative process in ultrashort intense laser-matter interaction. It is the main source of coherent attosecond (1 as = 10−18 s) laser pulses to investigate ultrafast electron dynamics. HHG has become an important table-top source covering a spectral range from infrared to extreme ultraviolet (XUV). One way to extend the cutoff energy of HHG is to increase the intensity of the laser pulses. A consequence of HHG in such intense short laser fields is the characteristic nonadiabatic red and blue shifts of the spectrum, which are reviewed in the present work. An example of this nonperturbative light-matter interaction is presented for the one-electron nonsymmetric molecular ion HeH2+, as molecular systems allow for the study of the laser-molecule orientation dependence of such new effects including a four-step model of MHOHG (Molecular High-order Harmonic Generation).

D(s) meson as a quantitative probe of diffusion and hadronization in nuclear collisions.

The modifications of D(s)-meson spectra in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions are identified as a quantitative probe of key properties of the hot nuclear medium. The unique valence-quark content of the D(s)=cs̄ couples the well-known strangeness enhancement with the collective-flow pattern of primordially produced charm quarks. This idea is illustrated utilizing a consistent strong-coupling treatment with hydrodynamic bulk evolution and nonperturbative T-matrix interactions for both heavy-quark diffusion and hadronization in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). A large enhancement of the D(s) nuclear modification factor at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider is predicted, with a maximum of ∼1.5-1.8 at transverse momenta around 2 GeV/c. This is a direct consequence of the strong coupling of the heavy quarks to the QGP and their hadronization via coalescence with strange quarks. We furthermore introduce the effects of diffusion in the hadronic phase and suggest that an increase of the D-meson elliptic flow compared to the D(s) can disentangle the transport properties of hadronic and QGP liquids.

High Z effects in accounting for radiative component of the electron magnetic moment in hydrogen-like atoms

The behavior of electron energy levels in hydrogen-like atoms is studied while taking into account the nonperturbative interaction between the radiative component of the magnetic moment of a free electron Δgfree and the Coulomb field of an atomic nucleus with charge Z, including those with Z > 137. It is shown that for Zα ≪ 1 the energy-level shift is rather effectively determined through the matrix elements of the corresponding Dirac-Pauli operator with relativistic Coulomb wave functions. At the same time, for superheavy nuclei with Z ∼ 170, this shift, generated by Δgfree, is genuinely nonperturbative, behaves like ∼Z5 near the threshold of negative continuum, exceeds all the estimates of radiative corrections coming from vacuum polarization and electron self-energy known so far, and turns out to be at least of the same order as the effects of nuclear charge screening by filled electron shells.

Intrinsic transverse momentum and parton correlations from dynamical chiral symmetry breaking

The dynamical breaking of chiral symmetry in QCD is caused by nonperturbative interactions on a scale rho ~ 0.3 fm, much smaller than the hadronic size R ~ 1 fm. These short-distance interactions influence the intrinsic transverse momentum distributions of partons and their correlations at a low normalization point. We study this phenomenon in an effective description of low-energy dynamics based on chiral constituent quark degrees of freedom, which refers to the large-N_c limit of QCD. The nucleon is obtained as a system of constituent quarks and antiquarks moving in a self-consistent classical chiral field (chiral quark-soliton model). The calculated distributions of constituent quarks/antiquarks are matched with QCD partons at the scale rho^{-2}. The p_T distribution of valence quarks is localized at p_T^2 ~ R^{-2} and roughly of Gaussian shape. The sea quark distribution exhibits a would-be power-like tail ~1/p_T^2 extending up to the chiral symmetry-breaking scale. Such behavior is seen in the flavor-singlet unpolarized and nonsinglet polarized sea. The high-momentum tails are the result of short-range correlations between sea quarks in the nucleon's light-cone wave function, analogous to NN correlations in nuclei. The nucleon wave function contains correlated pairs of transverse size rho << R with sigma- and pi-like quantum numbers, whose internal wave functions become identical at p_T^2 ~ rho^{-2} (restoration of chiral symmetry). These features are model-independent and represent an effect of dynamical chiral symmetry breaking on the nucleon's partonic structure. Our results have numerous implications for the P_T distributions of particles produced in hard scattering processes. The nonperturbative parton correlations predicted here could be observed in particle correlations between the current and target fragmentation regions of DIS.

Quark condensate for various heavy flavors

The quark condensate is calculated within the world-line effective-action formalism, by using for the Wilson loop an ansatz provided by the stochastic vacuum model. Starting with the relation between the quark and the gluon condensates in the heavy-quark limit, we diminish the current quark mass down to the value of the inverse vacuum correlation length, finding in this way a 64%-decrease in the absolute value of the quark condensate. In particular, we find that the conventional formula for the heavy-quark condensate cannot be applied to the c-quark, and that the corrections to this formula can reach 23% even in the case of the b-quark. We also demonstrate that, for an exponential parametrization of the two-point correlation function of gluonic field strengths, the quark condensate does not depend on the non-confining non-perturbative interactions of the stochastic background Yang-Mills fields.

Efficient estimation of energy transfer efficiency in light-harvesting complexes

The fundamental physical mechanisms of energy transfer in photosynthetic complexes is not yet fully understood. In particular, the degree of efficiency or sensitivity of these systems for energy transfer is not known given their realistic with surrounding photonic and phononic environments. One major problem in studying light-harvesting complexes has been the lack of an efficient method for simulation of their dynamics in biological environments. To this end, here we revisit the second order time-convolution (TC2) master equation and examine its reliability beyond extreme Markovian and perturbative limits. In particular, we present a derivation of TC2 without making the usual weak system-bath coupling assumption. Using this equation, we explore the long-time behavior of exciton dynamics of Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) portein complex. Moreover, we introduce a constructive error analysis to estimate the accuracy of TC2 equation in calculating energy transfer efficiency, exhibiting reliable performance for system-bath interactions with weak and intermediate memory and strength. Furthermore, we numerically show that energy transfer efficiency is optimal and robust for the FMO protein complex of green sulfur bacteria with respect to variations in reorganization energy and bath correlation time scales.

Laser-assisted nuclear photoeffect

Proton emission from nuclei via the nuclear photoeffect in the combined electromagnetic fields of a $\ensuremath{\gamma}$-ray photon and an intense laser wave is studied. An $S$-matrix approach to the process is developed by utilizing methods known from the theory of nonperturbative laser-atom interactions. As a specific example, photo-proton ejection from halo nuclei is considered. We show that, due to the presence of the laser field, rich sideband structures arise in the photo-proton energy spectra. Their dependence on the parameters and relative orientation of the photon fields is discussed.

Nucleon axial and pseudoscalar form factors from the covariant Faddeev equation

We compute the axial and pseudoscalar form factors of the nucleon in the Dyson-Schwinger approach. To this end, we solve a covariant three-body Faddeev equation for the nucleon wave function and determine the matrix elements of the axialvector and pseudoscalar isotriplet currents. Our only input is a well-established and phenomenologically successful ansatz for the nonperturbative quark-gluon interaction. As a consequence of the axial Ward-Takahashi identity that is respected at the quark level, the Goldberger-Treiman relation is reproduced for all current-quark masses. We discuss the timelike pole structure of the quark-antiquark vertices that enters the nucleon matrix elements and determines the momentum dependence of the form factors. Our result for the axial charge underestimates the experimental value by 20-25% which might be a signal of missing pion-cloud contributions. The axial and pseudoscalar form factors agree with phenomenological and lattice data in the momentum range above Q^2 ~ 1...2 GeV^2.

Quark–pion coupling strength and ground state baryon spectra in a chiral potential model

Chiral symmetry is incorporated into a relativistic independent-quark model with a square root confining potential and the quark–pion coupling strength, Gqqπ for quarks in a nucleon is estimated. The values of (Gqqπ2/4π) obtained with the approximation of a point pion as well as finite size pion are quite comparable with those estimated earlier by other researchers. Under the assumption that the baryon is an assembly of independent quarks confined in a first approximation by the square root potential that represents the nonperturbative gluon interactions, the model is also adopted to study the ground-state baryon spectrum taking into account perturbatively the contribution of the residual quark–pion coupling and that of the quark–gluon coupling in the baryon over and above the necessary center-of-mass correction. The physical masses of the ground state baryons calculated with the quark–gluon coupling constant αc = 0.227 agree reasonably well with experimental data.

Quark recombination and heavy quark diffusion in hot nuclear matter

We discuss resonance recombination for quarks and show that it is compatible with quark and hadron distributions in local thermal equilibrium. We then calculate realistic heavy quark phase space distributions in heavy ion collisions using Langevin simulations with non-perturbative T-matrix interactions in hydrodynamic backgrounds. We hadronize the heavy quarks on the critical hypersurface given by hydrodynamics after constructing a criterion for the relative recombination and fragmentation contributions. We discuss the influence of recombination and flow on the resulting heavy meson and single electron RAA and elliptic flow. We will also comment on the effect of diffusion of open heavy flavor mesons in the hadronic phase.

Precision computation of the kaon bag parameter

Indirect CP violation in K→ππ decays plays a central role in constraining the flavor structure of the Standard Model (SM) and in the search for new physics. For many years the leading uncertainty in the SM prediction of this phenomenon was the one associated with the nonperturbative strong interaction dynamics in this process. Here we present a fully controlled lattice QCD calculation of these effects, which are described by the neutral kaon mixing parameter BK. We use a two step HEX smeared clover-improved Wilson action, with four lattice spacings from a≈0.054 fm to a≈0.093 fm and pion masses at and even below the physical value. Nonperturbative renormalization is performed in the RI-MOM scheme, where we find that operator mixing induced by chiral symmetry breaking is very small. Using fully nonperturbative continuum running, we obtain our main result BKRI(3.5 GeV)=0.531(6)stat(2)sys. A perturbative 2-loop conversion yields BKMS¯-NDR(2 GeV)=0.564(6)stat(3)sys(6)PT and BˆK=0.773(8)stat(3)sys(8)PT, which is in good agreement with current results from fits to experimental data.

A new parametric equation of state and quark stars

It is still a matter of debate to understand the equation of state of cold matter with supra-nuclear density in compact stars because of unknown non-perturbative strong interaction between quarks. Nevertheless, it is speculated from an astrophysical view point that quark clusters could form in cold quark matter due to strong coupling at realistic baryon densities. Although it is hard to calculate this conjectured matter from first principles, one can expect that the inter-cluster interaction will share some general features with the nucleon-nucleon interaction successfully depicted by various models. We adopt a two-Gaussian component soft-core potential with these general features and show that quark clusters can form stable simple cubic crystal structure if we assume that the wave function of quark clusters have a Gaussian form. With this parametrization, the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff equation is solved with reasonably constrained parameter space to give mass-radius relations of crystalline solid quark stars. With baryon number densities truncated at 2n0 at surface and the range of the interaction fixed at 2 fm we can reproduce similar mass-radius relations to that obtained with bag model equations of state. The maximum mass ranges from ∼ 0.5M⊙ to ≳ 3M⊙. The recently measured high pulsar mass (≳ 2M⊙) is then used to constrain the parameters of this simple interaction potential.

Thermal relaxation of charm in hadronic matter

The thermal relaxation rate of open-charm (D) mesons in hot and dense hadronic matter is calculated using empirical elastic scattering amplitudes. D-meson interactions with thermal pions are approximated by D⁎ resonances, while scattering off other hadrons (K, η, ρ, ω, K⁎, N, Δ) is evaluated using vacuum scattering amplitudes as available in the literature based on effective Lagrangians and constrained by realistic spectroscopy. The thermal relaxation time of D-mesons in a hot π gas is found to be around 25–50 fm/c for temperatures T=150–180 MeV, which reduces to 10–25 fm/c in a hadron-resonance gas. The latter values, argued to be conservative estimates, imply significant modifications of D-meson spectra in heavy-ion collisions. Close to the critical temperature (Tc), the spatial diffusion coefficient (Ds) is surprisingly similar to recent calculations for charm quarks in the Quark–Gluon Plasma using non-perturbative T-matrix interactions. This suggests a possibly continuous minimum structure of Ds around Tc.

Low-energyp-dscattering andHe3in pionless effective field theory

We calculate low-energy proton--deuteron scattering in the framework of pionless effective field theory. In the quartet channel, we calculate the elastic scattering phase shift up to next-to-next-to-leading order in the power counting. In the doublet channel, we perform a next-to-leading order calculation. We obtain good agreement with the available phase shift analyses down to the scattering threshold. The phase shifts in the region of non-perturbative Coulomb interactions are calculated by using an optimised integration mesh. Moreover, the Coulomb contribution to the 3He-3H binding energy difference is evaluated in first order perturbation theory. We comment on the implications of our results for the power counting of subleading three-body forces.

Role of anomalous chromomagnetic interaction in Pomeron and Odderon structures and in gluon distribution

We calculate the contribution arising from nonperturbative quark-gluon chromomagnetic interaction to the high-energy total quark-quark cross section and to gluon distributions in nucleon. The estimation obtained within the instanton model of QCD vacuum leads to the conclusion that this type of interaction gives the dominating contribution to the Pomeron coupling with the light quarks and to gluon distribution in light hadrons at small virtualities of quarks and gluons. We argue that the Odderon, which is the P = C = −1 partner of the Pomeron, is governed by the spin-flip component related to nonperturbative three-gluon exchange induced by anomalous quark-gluon chromomagnetic interaction.