A novel strategy to prove chiral symmetry breaking in QCD-like theories
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: We demonstrate that chiral symmetry breaking occurs in the confining regime of QCD-like theories with N c colors and N f flavors. Our proof is based on a novel strategy, called ‘downlifting’, by which solutions of the 't Hooft anomaly matching and persistent mass conditions for a theory with N f − 1 flavors are constructed from those of a theory with N f flavors, while N c is fixed. By induction, chiral symmetry breaking is proven for any N f ≥ p m i n in the confining regime, where p m i n is the smallest prime factor of N c . The proof can be extended to N f < p m i n under the additional assumption on the absence of phase transitions when quark masses are sent to infinity. Our results do not rely on assumptions on the spectrum of massless bound states other than the fact that they are color-singlet hadrons.
Source: Physics Letters B
Institutions: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Roma I, Sapienza University of Rome, Scuola Normale Superiore, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Pisa, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives, Université Paris-Saclay, Institut de Physique Théorique, The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP)
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
Awards: G15967578, Exotic High Energy Phenomenology, G2595738051, EXC 2094: ORIGINS: Vom Ursprung des Universums bis zu den ersten Bausteinen des Lebens, New Avenues in Strong Dynamics: from the Early Universe to the Lab., Programs on Critical Problems in Physics, Astrophysics and Biophysics at the Aspen Center for Physics
OpenAlex ID: W4394007036