Chiral Symmetry Breaking Research Articles

A Skyrme Model with Novel Chiral Symmetry Breaking

An extension of the Skyrme model is presented in which derivative terms are added that break chiral symmetry to isospin symmetry. The theory contains just one new parameter and it reduces to the standard Skyrme model when this symmetry breaking parameter vanishes. The same Faddeev-Bogomolny energy bound applies for all parameter values, but the parameter can be tuned so that the energy of the single Skyrmion is much closer to the bound than in the standard Skyrme model. Applying the rational map approximation to multi-Skyrmions suggests that, for a suitable value of the symmetry breaking parameter, binding energies in this theory may be significantly more realistic than in the standard Skyrme model.

A Complex Reaction Network Model for Spontaneous Mirror Symmetry Breaking in Viedma Deracemizations.

Attrition-enhanced chiral symmetry breaking in crystals, known as Viedma deracemization, is a promising method for converting racemic solid phases into enantiomerically pure ones under non equilibrium conditions. However, many aspects of this process remain unclear. In this study, we present a new investigation into Viedma deracemization using a comprehensive kinetic rate equation continuous model based on classical primary nucleation theory, crystal growth, and Ostwald ripening. Our approach employs a fully micro-reversible kinetic scheme with a size-dependent solubility following the Gibbs-Thomson rule. To validate our model, we use data from a real NaClO3deracemization experiment. After parametrization, the model shows spontaneous mirror symmetry breaking (SMSB) under grinding. Additionally, we identify a bifurcation scenario with a lower and upper limit of the grinding intensity that leads to deracemization, including a minimum deracemization time within this window. Furthermore, this model uncovers that SMSB is caused by multiple instances of concealed high-order autocatalysis. Our findings provide new insights into attrition-enhanced deracemization and its potential applications in chiral molecule synthesis and understanding biological homochirality.

Green chiral separation of racemic mixture via crystallization induced deracemization process synergistically intensified by ultrasound and temperature cycling

Deracemization is a promising chiral resolution technique that combines racemization reaction with stereoselective crystallization for complete chiral symmetry breaking and has attracted much attention. However, the integration process of reaction-crystallization is rather complex and often requires long operation time with high initial solid enantiomer excess which greatly limits its wide application. Herein, we proposed a novel strategy that combines the use of both ultrasound and temperature cycles to accelerate the process of deracemization and thereby chiral separation. A chiral compound, N-acetyl-dl-leucine, was selected as a model drug for experimental validation. We found that either ultrasound or temperature cycle process was capable of accelerating the deracemization efficiency, nonetheless, the combination of the two methods leads to the antagonistic action, decreasing process efficiency and product chiral purity. Through the time-elapsed characterizations on enantiomeric purity of N-acetyl-l-leucine over the course of deracemization, we revealed that the ultrasound negatively impacted the process efficiency of chiral separation via promotion of primary heterogeneous nucleation during the cooling stage. Finally, we strategically designed a synergistic process intensification of crystallization-induced deracemization between temperature cycling and the periodic ultrasound that switches on only during the heating stage to achieve highly efficient separation of pure N-acetyl-l-leucine with theoretical 100% yield at extremely low initial solid ee%.

Real-Time Nonperturbative Dynamics of Jet Production in Schwinger Model: Quantum Entanglement and Vacuum Modification.

The production of jets should allow testing the real-time response of the QCD vacuum disturbed by the propagation of high-momentum color charges. Addressing this problem theoretically requires a real-time, nonperturbative method. It is well known that the Schwinger model [QED in (1+1) dimensions] shares many common properties with QCD, including confinement, chiral symmetry breaking, and the existence of vacuum fermion condensate. As a step in developing such an approach, we report here on fully quantum simulations of a massive Schwinger model coupled to external sources representing quark and antiquark jets as produced in e^{+}e^{-} annihilation. We study, for the first time, the modification of the vacuum chiral condensate by the propagating jets and the quantum entanglement between the fragmenting jets. Our results indicate strong entanglement between the fragmentation products of the two jets at rapidity separations Δη≤2, which can potentially exist also in QCD and can be studied in experiments.

Investigation of the confinement in massive QED3

By the application of the Schwinger function, the deconfinement in massive quantum electrodynamics in [Formula: see text]-dimensional (QED3) is investigated. It is shown that oscillating behavior of the Schwinger function gradually disappears with fermion mass increasing based on coupled Dyson–Schwinger equations in massive QED3. On the other hand, we have shown that the confined fermion transfers gradually into the phase of deconfinement with the increasing boson mass, which is consistent with the result in the case of massless QED3. Finally, we emphasized that dynamical chiral symmetry breaking and confinement always appear simultaneously in massive QED3.

Toward minimal composite Higgs models from regular geometries in bottom-up holography

We study a bottom-up, holographic description of a field theory yielding the spontaneous breaking of an approximate $SO(5)$ global symmetry to its $SO(4)$ subgroup. The weakly coupled, six-dimensional gravity dual has regular geometry. One of the dimensions is compactified on a circle that shrinks smoothly to zero size at a finite value of the holographic direction, hence introducing a physical scale in a way that mimics the effect of confinement in the dual four-dimensional field theory. We study the spectrum of small fluctuations of the bulk fields carrying $SO(5)$ quantum numbers, which can be interpreted as spin-0 and spin-1 bound states in the dual field theory. This work supplements an earlier publication focused only on the $SO(5)$ singlet states. We explore the parameter space of the theory, paying particular attention to composite states that have the right quantum numbers to be identified as pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons (PNGBs). We find that in this model the PNGBs are generally heavy, with masses of the same order as other bound states, indicating the presence of a sizeable amount of explicit symmetry breaking in the field-theory side. Nevertheless, we also find a qualitatively new, unexpected result. When the dimension of the field-theory operator inducing $SO(5)$ breaking is close to half the space-time dimensionality, there exists a region of parameter space in which the PNGBs and the lightest scalar are both parametrically light in comparison to all other bound states of the field theory. Although this region is known to yield metastable classical backgrounds, this finding might be relevant to model building in the composite Higgs context.

Primordial black hole dark matter from catastrogenesis with unstable pseudo-Goldstone bosons

We propose a new scenario for the formation of asteroid-mass primordial black holes (PBHs). Our mechanism is based on the annihilation of the string-wall network associated with the breaking of a U(1) global symmetry into a discrete ZN symmetry. If the potential has multiple local minima (N > 1) the network is stable, and the annihilation is guaranteed by a bias among the different vacua. The collapse of the string-wall network is accompanied by catastrogenesis, a large production of pseudo-Goldstone bosons (pGBs) — e.g. axions, ALPs, or majorons — gravitational waves, and PBHs. If pGBs rapidly decay into products that thermalize, as predicted e.g. in the high-quality QCD axion and heavy majoron models, they do not contribute to the dark matter population, but we show that PBHs can constitute 100% of the dark matter. The gravitational wave background produced by catastrogenesis with heavy unstable axions, ALPs, or majorons could be visible in future interferometers.

A possibility of existence of a pseudovector-type quark–antiquark condensate in the quark matter and Nambu–Goldstone modes on that condensate in the Nambu–Jona–Lasinio model

A possibility of a pseudovector-type quark–antiquark condensed phase, which leads to a quark spin polarized phase, in the quark matter is investigated taking account of the vacuum effects leading to the chiral symmetry breaking by using the Nambu–Jona–Lasinio model. Also, possible Nambu–Goldstone modes on the pseudovector-type quark–antiquark condensate and the tensor-type quark–antiquark condensate, which also leads to the quark spin polarized phase, are investigated.

Unpolarized transverse-momentum-dependent sea quark asymmetries of light nuclei in nonperturbative QCD

We investigate the transverse-momentum dependence of sea quark asymmetries in helium and deuteron nuclei. Accordingly, we calculate the nuclear sea quark distributions, in the first step, based on the modified chiral quark exchange formalism at the low Q 2 scale (Q 2 = 0.35 GeV2) in the nonperturbative region of quantum chromodynamics. In this formalism, the sea quark distributions are not symmetric because of chiral symmetry breaking. In the next step, we compute the transverse-momentum dependence of sea quark distributions using the covariant parton model, in which the unpolarized transverse-momentum-dependent (TMD) quark distribution functions are related to corresponding integrated ones. Finally, we obtain TMD quark–antiquark asymmetry of the strange sea for 3 He and deuteron, and also asymmetry for 3 He. To study the European Muon Collaboration (EMC) effect in the 3 He nucleus, we determine the ratio of the TMD strange sea asymmetries of 3 He and deuteron.

Hadronic structure on the light front. VII. Pions and kaons and their partonic distributions

This work is a continuation in our series of papers, that addresses quark models of hadronic structure on the light front, motivated by the QCD vacuum structure and lattice results. The spontaneous breaking of chiral symmetry on the light front, is shown to parallel that in the rest frame, where the non-local instanton induced $^\prime$t Hooft interaction plays a central role. By rewriting this interaction solely in terms of the good component of the fermionic field, a scalar chiral condensate emerges in the mean-field approximation, which is identical to the one obtained in the rest frame. The pions and kaons emerge as deeply bound Goldstone modes in the chiral limit, with the scalar-isoscalar sigma meson mode as a threshold state with zero binding. We explicitly derive the light front distribution amplitudes (DAs) and partonic functions (PDFs) for these mesons. The DAs and PDFs are in good agreement with those extracted from the QCD instanton vacuum in the rest frame, using the large momentum effective theory (LaMET). The QCD evolved DAs and PDFs compare well with available measurements, as well as recent lattice results.

Conformal B−L and pseudo-Goldstone dark matter

We show that a conformal extension of the standard model with local B-L symmetry and two complex scalars breaking B-L can provide a unified description of neutrino mass, origin of matter and dark matter. There are two hierarchical B-L breaking vacuum expectation value (VEV) scales in the model, the higher denoted by $v_B$ and the lower by $v_A$. The higher breaking scale is dynamically implemented via the Coleman-Weinberg mechanism and plays a key role in the model since it induces electroweak symmetry breaking as well as the lower B-L breaking scale. It is also responsible for neutrino masses via the seesaw mechanism and origin of matter. The imaginary part of the complex scalar with lower B-L breaking VEV plays the role of a pseudo-Goldstone dark matter (DM). The DM particle is unstable with its lifetime naturally longer than $10^{28}$ seconds. We show that its relic density arises from the freeze-in mechanism for a wide parameter domain. Due to the pseudo-Goldstone boson nature of the DM particle, the direct detection cross section is highly suppressed. The model also predicts the dark matter to be heavier than 100 TeV and it decays to two high energy neutrinos which can be observable at the IceCube, providing a test of this model.

Dispersive constraints on fermion masses

We demonstrate that fermion masses in the Standard Model (SM) can be constrained by the dispersion relations obeyed by hadronic and semileptonic decay widths of a fictitious heavy quark $Q$ with an arbitrary mass. These relations, imposing stringent connections between the high-mass and low-mass behaviors of decay widths, correlate a heavy quark mass and the chiral symmetry breaking scale. Given the known input from leading-order heavy quark expansion and a hadronic threshold for decay products, we solve for a physical heavy quark decay width. It is shown that the charm (bottom) quark mass $m_c= 1.35$ GeV ($m_b= 4.0$ GeV) can be determined by the dispersion relation for the $Q\to du\bar d$ ($Q\to c\bar ud$) decay with the threshold $2m_\pi$ ($m_\pi+m_D$), where $m_\pi$ ($m_D$) denotes the pion ($D$ meson) mass. Requiring that the dispersion relation for the $Q\to su\bar d$ ($Q\to d\mu^+\nu_\mu$, $Q\to u\tau^-\bar\nu_\tau$) decay with the threshold $m_\pi+m_K$ ($m_\pi+m_\mu$, $m_\pi+m_\tau$) yields the same heavy quark mass, $m_K$ being the kaon mass, we constrain the strange quark (muon, $\tau$ lepton) mass to be $m_s= 0.12$ GeV ($m_\mu=0.11$ GeV, $m_\tau= 2.0$ GeV). Moreover, all the predicted decay widths corresponding to the above masses agree with the data. It is pointed out that our formalism is similar to QCD sum rules for probing resonance properties, and that the Pauli interference (weak annihilation) provides the higher-power effect necessary for establishing the solutions of the hadronic (semilaptonic) decay widths. This work suggests that the parameters in the SM may not be free, but arranged properly to achieve internal dynamical consistency.

Lévy flight for electrons in graphene: Superdiffusive-to-diffusive transport transition

In this work we propose an electronic L\'evy flight device, analogous to a recent optical realization. To that end, we investigate the transmission of electrons in graphene nanoribbons in the presence of circular electrostatic clusters, whose diameter follow a power-law distribution. We analyze the effect of the electrostatic clusters on the electronic transport regime of the nanoribbons, in terms of its diffusion behavior. Our numerical calculations show that the presence of circular electrostatic clusters induces a transition from L\'evy (superdiffusive) to diffusive transport as the energy increases. Furthermore, we argue that in our electronic L\'evy flight device, superdiffusive transport is an exclusive feature of the low-energy quantum regime, while diffusive transport is a feature of the semiclassical regime. Therefore, we attribute the observed transition to the chiral symmetry breaking, once the energy moves away from the Dirac point of graphene.

Gross-Neveu model with O(2)L×O(2)R chiral symmetry: Duality with Zakharov-Mikhailov model and large N solution

The two-flavor Gross-Neveu model with ${\mathrm{U}(2)}_{L}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}\mathrm{U}(2{)}_{R}$ chiral symmetry in $1+1$ dimensions is used to construct a novel variant of four-fermion theories with ${\mathrm{O}(2)}_{L}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}\mathrm{O}(2{)}_{R}$ chiral symmetry. The spontaneous breaking of the group O(2), a continuous group with two connected components (rotations and reflections), gives rise to new phenomena. It is ideally suited to describe a situation where two distinct kinds of condensation compete, in particular chiral symmetry breaking (particle-hole condensation) and Cooper pairing (particle-particle condensation). After solving the O(2) chiral Gross-Neveu model in detail, we demonstrate that it is dual to another classically integrable model due to Zakharov and Mikhailov. The duality enables us to solve the quantum version of this model in the large $N$ limit with semiclassical methods, supporting its integrability at the quantum level. The resulting model is the unique four-fermion theory sharing the full Pauli-G\"ursey symmetry with free, massless fermions (``perfect Gross-Neveu model'') and provides us with a solvable model for competing chiral and Cooper pair condensates, including explicit soliton dynamics and the phase diagram.

In situ study of chiral symmetry breaking in sodium chlorate solutions by Mueller matrix polarimetry.

This work presents a novel approach for investigating symmetry-breaking processes during crystallization using Mueller matrix polarimetry. By applying this method to the cooling process of NaClO3 solutions, we demonstrate its ability to capture not only the initial and final stages of crystallization but also the intermediate steps and dynamics of the process. This technique provides more comprehensive information and insights into the symmetry-breaking mechanisms involved in crystal formation. Overall, this study highlights the potential of Mueller matrix polarimetry for in situ statistical measurements of the optical rotation and for monitoring the evolution of enantiomeric excesses.

Mass-induced confinement near the sill of the conformal window

We revisit standard arguments for hyperscaling of the spectrum when a non-zero fermion mass is introduced to a gauge-fermion theory which is conformal in the infrared limit. With some general assumptions, we argue that the induced confinement scale will be significantly enhanced near the edge of the conformal to confining transition. This enhancement can allow for the fermion mass to be arbitrarily small compared to the confinement scale. This scale separation may allow for apparent spontaneous breaking of chiral symmetry within the conformal window, which may be of interest for construction of dilaton effective field theories in this regime.

Mass spectra of neutral mesons K0,π0,η,η′ at finite magnetic field, temperature and quark chemical potential

The mass spectra of neutral mesons $K_0, \pi_0, \eta, \eta'$ on temperature-quark chemical potential $(T-\mu)$ plane in the presence of a constant magnetic field is investigated in the $SU(3)$ NJL model. As a Goldstone boson of chiral symmetry breaking, the mass of $K_0$ meson increases with temperature and/or quark chemical potential, and we observe two kinds of mass jumps of $K_0$ meson in media, which is induced by the mass jump of constituent quarks and the magnetic field, respectively. Due to the breaking of isospin symmetry between $u$ and $d$ quarks in magnetic fields, the mixing of $\pi_0-\eta- \eta'$ mesons occurs and this leads to rich structures of their mass spectra. For instance, $\pi_0$ mass is influenced by the strange quark. There appear the change of increase ratio of $\pi_0$ mass at high $\mu$ and vanishing $T$ and the $\pi_0$ mass jump crossing over the threshold of two times of strange quark mass at finite $T$ and $\mu$. The mass ordering of $\pi_0, \ \eta,\ \eta'$ mesons varies in media, due to their mass jumps, which are induced by the mass jump of constituent quarks or the magnetic field.

Four-quark scatterings in QCD I

We investigate dynamical chiral symmetry breaking and the emergence of mesonic bound states from the infrared dynamics of four-quark scatterings. Both phenomena originate from the resonant scalar-pseudoscalar channel of the four-quark scatterings, and we compute the functional renormalisation group (fRG) flows of the Fierz-complete four-quark interaction of up and down quarks with its tt channel momentum dependence. This is done in the isospin symmetric case, also including the flow of the quark two-point function. This system can be understood as the fRG analogues of the complete Bethe-Salpeter equations and quark gap equation. The pole mass of the pion is determined from both direct calculations of the four-quark flows in the Minkowski regime of momenta and the analytic continuation based on results in the Euclidean regime, which are consistent with each other.

Chiral symmetry breaking and entropy production in Dean vortices

In toroidal pipes, the secondary flow in cross section is a mirror symmetric pair of counter-rotating axially oriented Dean vortices. This mirror symmetry is broken in helical pipes. We investigate in detail the mirror symmetry breaking in these secondary flows in going from toroidal to helical geometries. We quantify the degree of mirror symmetry breaking in helical flows by calculating both an (i) order-parameter − 1 ≤ χ ≤ 1 that measures the net integrated chirality of vortices in section and (ii) the entropy production due to both viscous shear forces and convection for Dean vortices as the Dean number and pitch of the helix are varied. We prove that the entropy production due to convective processes is always greater than that due to viscous shear, for stationary incompressible flows in the absence of body forces. For the same pipe radius and pipe curvature, fluid density, viscosity, and entrance flows, the vortex entropy production in the stationary state is minimized for helical conduits (for a given Dean number) with respect to that of toroidal pipes (zero pitch). The dissipation in the fluid flow due to Dean vortices decreases in going from a toroidal to a helical geometry, while the chiral order parameter tends to χ = ± 1 for finite values of the pitch as the Dean number is decreased.

Hadron spectra and pion form factor in dynamical holographic QCD model with anomalous 5D mass of scalar field* *Supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (12235016, 12221005, 11725523, 11735007, 12275108), the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB34030000, XDPB15), the start-up funding from University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS), and the

The simplest version of the dynamical holographic QCD model is described by adding the KKSS model action on a dilaton-graviton coupled background, in which the AdS metric is deformed by the gluon condensation and further deformed by the chiral condensation. In this framework, both the chiral symmetry breaking and linear confinement can be realized. The light-flavor hadron spectra and the pion form factor were investigated, but it was difficult to reconcile the light-flavor hadron spectra and pion form factor. By considering the anomalous 5-dimension mass correction of the scalar field from QCD running coupling, it is found that the light flavor hadron spectra and pion form factor can be described well simultaneously. In particular, the ground state and lower excitation states of the scalar, pseudo scalar, and axial vector meson spectra are improved. However, the vector meson spectra are not sensitive to the anomalous 5-dimension mass correction of the scalar field.