Nonlocal SU(3) chiral quark models at finite temperature: the role of the Polyakov loop

We analyze the role played by the Polyakov loop in the description of the chiral phase transition within the framework of nonlocal SU(3) chiral models with flavor mixing. We show that its presence provides a substantial enhancement of the predicted critical temperature, bringing it to a better agreement with the most recent results of lattice calculations.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figur

The hadronic off-shell width of meson resonances

Within the resonance chiral effective theory we study the dressed propagators of the spin-1 fields, as arise from a Dyson-Schwinger resummation perturbatively constructed from loop diagrams with absorptive contributions in the s-channel. We apply the procedure to the vector pion form factor and the elastic pion-pion scattering to obtain the off-shell width of the rho_0 meson. We adopt a definition of the off-shell width of spin-1 meson resonances that satisfies the requirements of analyticity, unitarity, chiral symmetry and asymptotic behaviour ruled by QCD. To fulfil these constraints the resummation procedure cannot consist only of self-energy diagrams. Our width definition is shown to be independent of the formulation used to describe the spin-1 meson resonances.Comment: 1+12 pages, 4 figures. Minor changes in text. Conclusions unchanged. Version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Main phenomenological features of the spontaneous CP violation in SU(3) x U(1) models

We analyze the phenomenological consequences of assuming spontaneous CP violation in an SU(3) x U(1) model with three Higgs triplets and one sextuplet. After the identification of the relevant physical scalars, we estimate the contributions to the parameters $\Delta m_K$, $\epsilon$ and $\epsilon'$ coming from the Higgs-fermion couplings.Comment: 21 pages RevTex, epsf, epsfig, 4 figure

Charged pion masses under strong magnetic fields in the NJL model

The behavior of charged pion masses in the presence of a static uniform magnetic field is studied in the framework of the two-flavor NJL model, using a magnetic field-independent regularization scheme. Analytical calculations are carried out employing the Ritus eigenfunction method, which allows us to properly take into account the presence of Schwinger phases in the quark propagators. Numerical results are obtained for definite model parameters, comparing the predictions of the model with present lattice QCD results.Fil: Coppola, Máximo. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Investigación y Aplicaciones No Nucleares. Gerencia Física (Centro Atómico Constituyentes). Proyecto Tandar; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Gomez Dumm, Daniel Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Física La Plata. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Física La Plata; ArgentinaFil: Scoccola, Norberto Nerio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Favaloro; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Investigación y Aplicaciones No Nucleares. Gerencia Física (Centro Atómico Constituyentes). Proyecto Tandar; Argentin