41 research outputs found
Dual Confinement of Grand Unified Monopoles?
A simple formal computation, and a variation on an old thought experiment,
both indicate that QCD with light quarks may confine fundamental color magnetic
charges, giving an explicit as well as elegant resolution to the `global color'
paradox, strengthening Vachaspati's SU(5) electric-magnetic duality, opening
new lines of inquiry for monopoles in cosmology, and suggesting a class of
geometrically large QCD excitations -- loops of Z(3) color magnetic flux
entwined with light-quark current. The proposal may be directly testable in
lattice gauge theory or supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. Recent results in
deeply-inelastic electron scattering, and future experiments both there and in
high-energy collisions of nuclei, could give evidence on the existence of Z(3)
loops. If confirmed, they would represent a consistent realization of the bold
concept underlying the Slansky-Goldman-Shaw `glow' model -- phenomena besides
standard meson-baryon physics manifest at long distance scales -- but without
that model's isolable fractional electric charges.Comment: 17 pages, standard LaTex, to appear in Physics Reports commemorating
Richard Slansk
Possible multiparticle ridge-like correlations in very high multiplicity proton-proton collisions
The CMS collaboration at the LHC has reported a remarkable and unexpected
phenomenon in very high-multiplicity high energy proton-proton collisions: a
positive correlation between two particles produced at similar azimuthal
angles, spanning a large range in rapidity. We suggest that this "ridge"-like
correlation may be a reflection of the rare events generated by the collision
of aligned flux tubes connecting the valence quarks in the wave functions of
the colliding protons. The "spray" of particles resulting from the approximate
line source produced in such inelastic collisions then gives rise to events
with a strong correlation between particles produced over a large range of both
positive and negative rapidity. We suggest an additional variable that is
sensitive to such a line source which is related to a commonly used measure,
ellipticity.Comment: Updated figure. Version to be published in Physics Letters
Quantum corrections to mass and central charge of supersymmetric solitons
We review some recent developments in the subject of quantum corrections to
soliton mass and central charge. We consider in particular approaches which use
local densities for these corrections, as first discussed by Hidenaga
Yamagishi. We then consider dimensional regularization of the supersymmetric
kink in 1+1 dimensions and an extension of this method to a 2+1-dimensional
gauge theory with supersymmetric abelian Higgs vortices as the solitons.Comment: 41 pages. Contribution to the Hidenaga Yamagishi commemorative volume
of Physics Reports, edited by E. Witten and I. Zahe
Problems of the rotating-torsion-balance limit on the photon mass
We discuss the problems (and the promise) of the ingenious method introduced
by Lakes, and recently improved on by Luo, to detect a possible small photon
mass by measuring the ambient magnetic vector potential from large scale
magnetic fields. We also point out how an improved ``indirect'' limit can be
obtained using modern measurements of astrophysical magnetic fields and plasmas
and that a good ``direct'' limit exists using properties of the solar wind.Comment: 4 pages, revised title and content
Local Casimir Energy For Solitons
Direct calculation of the one-loop contributions to the energy density of
bosonic and supersymmetric phi-to-the-fourth kinks exhibits: (1) Local mode
regularization. Requiring the mode density in the kink and the trivial sectors
to be equal at each point in space yields the anomalous part of the energy
density. (2) Phase space factorization. A striking position-momentum
factorization for reflectionless potentials gives the non-anomalous energy
density a simple relation to that for the bound state. For the supersymmetric
kink, our expression for the energy density (both the anomalous and
non-anomalous parts) agrees with the published central charge density, whose
anomalous part we also compute directly by point-splitting regularization.
Finally we show that, for a scalar field with arbitrary scalar background
potential in one space dimension, point-splitting regularization implies local
mode regularization of the Casimir energy density.Comment: 18 pages. Numerous new clarifications and additions, of which the
most important may be the direct derivation of local mode regularization from
point-splitting regularization for the bosonic kink in 1+1 dimension