Compact lattice U(1) and Seiberg-Witten duality: a quantitative comparison

It was conjectured some time ago that an effective description of the Coulomb-confinement transition in compact U(1) lattice gauge field theory could be described by scalar QED obtained by soft breaking of the N=2 Seiberg-Witten model down to N=0 in the strong coupling region where monopoles are light. In two previous works this idea was presented at a qualitative level. In this work we analyze in detail the conjecture and obtain encouraging quantitative agreement with the numerical determination of the monopole mass and the dual photon mass in the vicinity of the Coulomb to confining phase transition.Comment: 14 pag, 5 figure

Vector mesons in the Extended Chiral Quark Model

We extend our previous formulation of low-energy QCD in terms of an effective lagrangian containing operators of dimensionality $d\le 6$ constructed with pseudoscalars and quark fields, describing physics below the scale of chiral symmetry breaking. We include in this paper the vector and axial-vector channels. We follow closely the Extended Chiral Quark Model approach and consistently work in the large-$N_c$ and leading log approximation and take into account the constraints from chiral symmetry and chiral symmetry restoration. The optimal fit of all parameters gives further support to a heavy scalar meson with a mass $\sim 1$ GeV and a value of the axial pion-quark coupling constant $g_A \simeq 0.55$ to 0.66, depending on some assumptions concerning the Weinberg sum rules.Comment: 19 pages, Latex, JHEP class, more typos removed, few refs.adde

Axions and high-energy cosmic rays: Can the relic axion density be measured?

In a previous work we investigated the propagation of fast moving charged particles in a spatially constant but slowly time dependent pseudoscalar background, such as the one provided by cold relic axions. The background induces cosmic rays to radiate in the low-energy spectrum. While the energy loss caused by this mechanism on the primary cosmic rays is negligible, we investigate the hypothetical detection of the photons radiated and how they could provide an indirect way of verifying the cosmological relevance of axions. Assuming that the cosmic ray flux is of the form J(E)~ E^-g we find that the energy radiated follows a distribution k^-((g-1)/2) for proton primaries, identical to the Galaxy synchrotron radiation that is the main background, and k^-(g/2) for electron primaries, which in spite of this sharper decay provide the dominant contribution in the low-energy spectrum. We discuss possible ways to detect this small diffuse contribution. Local detection in the vicinity of powerful cosmic rays emitters might also be possible.Comment: plot improved with background and comments adde

Stringification of Chiral Dynamics: Wess-Zumino interaction

The QCD hadronic string is supplemented with the reparameterization-invariant boundary interaction to background chiral fields associated with pions in a way compatible with the conformal symmetry. It allows the full reconstruction of the P-even part of the Chiral Lagrangian in a good agreement with the phenomenology of P-even meson interactions. The modification of boundary interaction necessary to induce the parity-odd Chiral Dynamics (WZW action) is outlined.Comment: 5 pages, misprints removed, Talks at the 1th Workshop on Hadron Structure and QCD, 18-22.May 2004, St.Petersburg, Russia, at the Bogolubov Conference on Problems of Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, 2-6.September 2004, Dubna, Russia and at the 6th Conference on Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum, 21-25.September 2004, Villasimius, Sardegna, Ital