In strong interaction physics, light front holography or light front holographic QCD is an approximate version of the theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) which results from mapping the gauge theory of QCD to a higher-dimensional anti-de Sitter space (AdS) inspired by the AdS/CFT correspondence [1] (gauge/gravity duality) proposed for string theory. This procedure makes it possible to find analytic solutions (closed-form expression) in situations where strong coupling occurs (the "strongly coupled regime"), improving predictions of the masses of hadrons (such as protons, neutrons, and mesons) and their internal structure revealed by high-energy accelerator experiments. The most widely used approach to finding approximate solutions to the QCD equations, lattice QCD, has had many successful applications; It is a numerical approach formulated in Euclidean space rather than physical Minkowski space-time. [2] [3]
One of the key problems in elementary particle physics is to compute the mass spectrum and structure of hadrons, such as the proton, as bound states of quarks and gluons. Unlike quantum electrodynamics (QED), the strong coupling constant of the constituents of a proton calculates hadronic properties, such as the proton mass and color confinement, a most difficult problem to solve. The most successful theoretical approach has been to formulate QCD as a lattice gauge theory [2] and employ large numerical simulations on advanced computers. Notwithstanding, important dynamical QCD properties in Minkowski space-time are not amenable to Euclidean numerical lattice computations. [3] An important theoretical goal is thus to find an initial approximation to QCD which is both analytically tractable and which can be systematically improved.
To address this problem, the light front holography approach maps a confining gauge theory quantized on the light front [4] to a higher-dimensional anti-de Sitter space (AdS) incorporating the AdS/CFT correspondence [1] as a useful guide. The AdS/CFT correspondence is an example of the holographic principle, since it relates gravitation in a five-dimensional AdS space to a conformal quantum field theory at its four-dimensional space-time boundary.
Light front quantization was introduced by Paul Dirac to solve relativistic quantum field theories. It is the ideal framework to describe the structure of the hadrons in terms of their constituents measured at the same light-front time, , the time marked by the front of a light wave. In the light front the Hamiltonian equations for relativistic bound state systems and the AdS wave equations have a similar structure, which makes the connection of QCD with gauge/gravity methods possible. [5] The interrelation of the AdS geometrical representation with light-front holography provides a remarkable first approximation for the mass spectra and wave functions of meson and baryon light-quark bound states. [6]
Light front holographic methods were originally found by Stanley J. Brodsky and Guy F. de Téramond in 2006 by mapping the electric charge [7] and inertia [8] distributions from the quark currents and the stress–energy tensor [9] of the fundamental constituents within a hadron in AdS [10] [11] to physical space time [12] [13] using light-front theory. A gravity dual of QCD is not known, but the mechanisms of confinement can be incorporated in the gauge/gravity correspondence by modifying the AdS geometry at large values of the AdS fifth-dimension coordinate , which sets the scale of the strong interactions. [14] [15] In the usual AdS/QCD framework [16] [17] fields in AdS are introduced to match the chiral symmetry of QCD, and its spontaneous symmetry breaking, but without explicit connection with the internal constituent structure of hadrons. [18]
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From this equation, we can map the dynamics of quarks and gluons within hadrons to a higher-dimensional anti-de Sitter (AdS) space. In a semiclassical approximation to QCD the light-front Hamiltonian equation is a relativistic and frame-independent Schrödinger equation [5]
where is the orbital angular momentum of the constituents and the variable is the invariant separation distance between the quarks in the hadron at equal light-front time. The variable is identified with the holographic variable in AdS space [7] and the confining potential energy is derived from the warp factor which modifies the AdS geometry and breaks its conformal invariance. [6] Its eigenvalues give the hadronic spectrum, and its eigenvectors represent the probability distributions of the hadronic constituents at a given scale.
In quantum chromodynamics (QCD), color confinement, often simply called confinement, is the phenomenon that color-charged particles cannot be isolated, and therefore cannot be directly observed in normal conditions below the Hagedorn temperature of approximately 2 terakelvin. Quarks and gluons must clump together to form hadrons. The two main types of hadron are the mesons and the baryons. In addition, colorless glueballs formed only of gluons are also consistent with confinement, though difficult to identify experimentally. Quarks and gluons cannot be separated from their parent hadron without producing new hadrons.
The up quark or u quark is the lightest of all quarks, a type of elementary particle, and a significant constituent of matter. It, along with the down quark, forms the neutrons and protons of atomic nuclei. It is part of the first generation of matter, has an electric charge of +2/3 e and a bare mass of 2.2+0.5
−0.4 MeV/c2. Like all quarks, the up quark is an elementary fermion with spin 1/2, and experiences all four fundamental interactions: gravitation, electromagnetism, weak interactions, and strong interactions. The antiparticle of the up quark is the up antiquark, which differs from it only in that some of its properties, such as charge have equal magnitude but opposite sign.
Technicolor theories are models of physics beyond the Standard Model that address electroweak gauge symmetry breaking, the mechanism through which W and Z bosons acquire masses. Early technicolor theories were modelled on quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the "color" theory of the strong nuclear force, which inspired their name.
In physics, an effective field theory is a type of approximation, or effective theory, for an underlying physical theory, such as a quantum field theory or a statistical mechanics model. An effective field theory includes the appropriate degrees of freedom to describe physical phenomena occurring at a chosen length scale or energy scale, while ignoring substructure and degrees of freedom at shorter distances. Intuitively, one averages over the behavior of the underlying theory at shorter length scales to derive what is hoped to be a simplified model at longer length scales. Effective field theories typically work best when there is a large separation between length scale of interest and the length scale of the underlying dynamics. Effective field theories have found use in particle physics, statistical mechanics, condensed matter physics, general relativity, and hydrodynamics. They simplify calculations, and allow treatment of dissipation and radiation effects.
Lattice QCD is a well-established non-perturbative approach to solving the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) theory of quarks and gluons. It is a lattice gauge theory formulated on a grid or lattice of points in space and time. When the size of the lattice is taken infinitely large and its sites infinitesimally close to each other, the continuum QCD is recovered.
A conformal anomaly, scale anomaly, trace anomaly or Weyl anomaly is an anomaly, i.e. a quantum phenomenon that breaks the conformal symmetry of the classical theory.
In particle physics, the parton model is a model of hadrons, such as protons and neutrons, proposed by Richard Feynman. It is useful for interpreting the cascades of radiation produced from quantum chromodynamics (QCD) processes and interactions in high-energy particle collisions.
In theoretical physics, the anti-de Sitter/quantum chromodynamics correspondence is a goal to describe quantum chromodynamics (QCD) in terms of a dual gravitational theory, following the principles of the AdS/CFT correspondence in a setup where the quantum field theory is not a conformal field theory.
William Allan Bardeen is an American theoretical physicist who worked at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. He is renowned for his foundational work on the chiral anomaly, the Yang-Mills and gravitational anomalies, the development of quantum chromodynamics and the scheme frequently used in perturbative analysis of experimentally observable processes such as deep inelastic scattering, high energy collisions and flavor changing processes.
Christopher T. Hill is an American theoretical physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory who did undergraduate work in physics at M.I.T., and graduate work at Caltech. Hill's Ph.D. thesis, "Higgs Scalars and the Nonleptonic Weak Interactions" (1977) contains one of the first detailed discussions of the two-Higgs-doublet model and its impact upon weak interactions. His work mainly focuses on new physics that can be probed in laboratory experiments or cosmology.
The light-front quantization of quantum field theories provides a useful alternative to ordinary equal-time quantization. In particular, it can lead to a relativistic description of bound systems in terms of quantum-mechanical wave functions. The quantization is based on the choice of light-front coordinates, where plays the role of time and the corresponding spatial coordinate is . Here, is the ordinary time, is one Cartesian coordinate, and is the speed of light. The other two Cartesian coordinates, and , are untouched and often called transverse or perpendicular, denoted by symbols of the type . The choice of the frame of reference where the time and -axis are defined can be left unspecified in an exactly soluble relativistic theory, but in practical calculations some choices may be more suitable than others.
In physics, vector meson dominance (VMD) was a model developed by J. J. Sakurai in the 1960s before the introduction of quantum chromodynamics to describe interactions between energetic photons and hadronic matter.
The light-front quantization of quantum field theories provides a useful alternative to ordinary equal-time quantization. In particular, it can lead to a relativistic description of bound systems in terms of quantum-mechanical wave functions. The quantization is based on the choice of light-front coordinates, where plays the role of time and the corresponding spatial coordinate is . Here, is the ordinary time, is a Cartesian coordinate, and is the speed of light. The other two Cartesian coordinates, and , are untouched and often called transverse or perpendicular, denoted by symbols of the type . The choice of the frame of reference where the time and -axis are defined can be left unspecified in an exactly soluble relativistic theory, but in practical calculations some choices may be more suitable than others. The basic formalism is discussed elsewhere.
The light-front quantization of quantum field theories provides a useful alternative to ordinary equal-time quantization. In particular, it can lead to a relativistic description of bound systems in terms of quantum-mechanical wave functions. The quantization is based on the choice of light-front coordinates, where plays the role of time and the corresponding spatial coordinate is . Here, is the ordinary time, is one Cartesian coordinate, and is the speed of light. The other two Cartesian coordinates, and , are untouched and often called transverse or perpendicular, denoted by symbols of the type . The choice of the frame of reference where the time and -axis are defined can be left unspecified in an exactly soluble relativistic theory, but in practical calculations some choices may be more suitable than others.
Higher-spin theory or higher-spin gravity is a common name for field theories that contain massless fields of spin greater than two. Usually, the spectrum of such theories contains the graviton as a massless spin-two field, which explains the second name. Massless fields are gauge fields and the theories should be (almost) completely fixed by these higher-spin symmetries. Higher-spin theories are supposed to be consistent quantum theories and, for this reason, to give examples of quantum gravity. Most of the interest in the topic is due to the AdS/CFT correspondence where there is a number of conjectures relating higher-spin theories to weakly coupled conformal field theories. It is important to note that only certain parts of these theories are known at present and not many examples have been worked out in detail except some specific toy models.
Zvi Bern is an American theoretical particle physicist. He is a professor at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
In quantum field theory, a sum rule is a relation between a static quantity and an integral over a dynamical quantity. Therefore, they have a form such as:
Guy de Téramond Peralta is a Costa Rican-French theoretical physicist. His research has been focused on nuclear and high energy physics. Following the quest for a wave equation similar to the Schrödinger equation in atomic physics, he introduced with Stanley Brodsky a nonperturbative first approximation to quantum chromodynamics to describe hadronic structure, known as light front holography. This analytic approach to the strong interactions is based on light front quantization and the AdS/CFT correspondence. He is also known for his role in the pioneering interconnections in Costa Rica and the Central American region to the Internet. In 2023, de Téramond was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame by the Internet Society.
In particle physics, the Cornell potential is an effective method to account for the confinement of quarks in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). It was developed by Estia J. Eichten, Kurt Gottfried, Toichiro Kinoshita, John Kogut, Kenneth Lane and Tung-Mow Yan at Cornell University in the 1970s to explain the masses of quarkonium states and account for the relation between the mass and angular momentum of the hadron. The potential has the form:
Color transparency is a phenomenon observed in high-energy particle physics, where hadrons created in a nucleus propagate through that nucleus with less interaction than expected. It suggests that hadrons are first created with a small size in the nucleus, and then grow to their nominal size. Here, color refers to the color charge, the property of quarks and gluons that determines how strongly they interact through the nuclear strong force.