Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “STRONG INTERACTIONS”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 739 records · Page 41

Microscopic Theory of Nuclear Fission

Nuclear fission represents the ultimate test for microscopic theories of nuclear structure and reactions. Fission is a large-amplitude, time-dependent phenomenon taking place in a self-bound, strongly interacting many-body system. It should, at least in principle, emerge from the complex interactions of nucleons within the nucleus. The goal of microscopic theories is to build a consistent and predictive theory of nuclear fission by using as only ingredients protons and neutrons, nuclear forces, and quantum many-body methods. Thanks to a constant increase in computing power, such a goal has never seemed more within reach. This chapter gives an overview both of the set of techniques used in microscopic theories to describe the fission process and of some recent successes achieved by this class of methods.

Nuclear physics and radiation physics↗

Quark-gluon discrimination in the search for gluino pair production at the LHC

Here, we study the impact of including quark- and gluon-initiated jet discrimination in the search for strongly interacting supersymmetric particles at the LHC. Taking the example of gluino pair production, considerable improvement is observed in the LHC search reach on including the jet substructure observables to the standard kinematic variables within a multivariate analysis. In particular, quark and gluon jet separation has higher impact in the region of intermediate mass-gap between the gluino and the lightest neutralino, as the difference between the signal and the standard model background kinematic distributions is reduced in this region. We also compare the predictions from different Monte Carlo event generators to estimate the uncertainty originating from the modelling of the parton shower and hadronization processes.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Effective hopping in holographic Bose and Fermi-Hubbard models

In this paper, we analyze a proposed gravity dual to a SU(N) Bose-Hubbard model, as well as construct a holographic dual of a SU(N) Fermi-Hubbard model from D-branes in string theory. In both cases, the SU(N) is dynamical, i.e. the hopping degrees of freedom are strongly coupled to SU(N) gauge bosons which themselves are strongly interacting. The vacuum expectation value (VEV) of the hopping term (i.e. the hopping energy) is analyzed in the gravity dual as a function of the bulk mass of the field dual to the hopping term, as well as of the coupling constants of the model. The bulk mass controls the anomalous dimension (i.e. the critical exponent) of the hopping term in the SU(N) Bose-Hubbard model. We compare the hopping energy to the corresponding result in a numerical simulation of the ungauged SU(N) Bose-Hubbard model. We find agreement when the hopping parameter is smaller than the other couplings. Our analysis shows that the kinetic energy increases as the bulk mass increases, due to increased contributions from the IR. The holographic Bose-Hubbard model is then compared with the string theory construction of a SU(N) Fermi-Hubbard model. The string theory construction makes it possible to describe fluctuations around a half-filled state in the supergravity limit, which map to O(1) occupation number fluctuations in the Fermi-Hubbard model at half filling. Finally, the VEV of the Bose-Hubbard model is shown to agree with the one of the fermionic Hubbard model with the help of a two-site version of the Jordan-Wigner transformation.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Non-perturbative effects in $μ → eγ$

We compute the non-perturbative contribution of semileptonic tensor operators $(\bar{q}σ^{μν}q)(\bar{ℓ}σ_{μv}ℓ)$ to the purely leptonic process μ → eγ and to the electric and magnetic dipole moments of charged leptons by matching onto chiral perturbation theory at low energies. This matching procedure has been used extensively to study semileptonic and leptonic weak decays of hadrons. In this paper, we apply it to observables that contain no strongly interacting external particles. The non-perturbative contribution to μ → e processes is used to extract the best current bound on lepton-flavor-violating semileptonic tensor operators, Λ BSM ≳ 450 TeV. We briefly discuss how the same method applies to dark-matter interactions.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Properties of the new $ \mathcal{N} $ = 1 AdS 4 vacuum of maximal supergravity

The recent comprehensive numerical study of critical points of the scalar potential of four-dimensional N = 8, SO(8) gauged supergravity using Machine Learning software in [1] has led to a discovery of a new N = 1 vacuum with a triality-invariant SO(3) symmetry. Guided by the numerical data for that point, we obtain a consistent SO(3) × Z 2 -invariant truncation of the N = 8 theory to an N = 1 supergravity with three chiral multiplets. Critical points of the truncated scalar potential include both the N = 1 point as well as two new non-supersymmetric and perturbatively unstable points not found by previous searches. Studying the structure of the submanifold of SO(3) × Z 2 -invariant supergravity scalars, we find that it has a simple interpretation as a submanifold of the 14-dimensional Z $3\atop{2}$ -invariant scalar manifold (SU(1, 1)/U(1)) 7 , for which we find a rather remarkable superpotential whose structure matches the single bit error correcting (7, 4) Hamming code. This 14-dimensional scalar manifold contains approximately one quarter of the known critical points. We also show that there exists a smooth supersymmetric domain wall which interpolates between the new N = 1 AdS4 solution and the maximally supersymmetric AdS4 vacuum. Using holography, this result indicates the existence of an N = 1 RG flow from the ABJM SCFT to a new strongly interacting conformal fixed point in the IR.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Differential cross-section measurements of the production of four charged leptons in association with two jets using the ATLAS detector

Differential cross-sections are measured for the production of four charged leptons in association with two jets. These measurements are sensitive to final states in which the jets are produced via the strong interaction as well as to the purely-electroweak vector boson scattering process. The analysis is performed using proton-proton collision data collected by ATLAS at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV and with an integrated luminosity of 140 fb –1 . The data are corrected for the effects of detector inefficiency and resolution and are compared to state-of-the-art Monte Carlo event generator predictions. The differential cross-sections are used to search for anomalous weak-boson self-interactions that are induced by dimension-six and dimension-eight operators in Standard Model effective field theory.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

On thermalization in the SYK and supersymmetric SYK models

The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis is a compelling conjecture which strives to explain the apparent thermal behavior of generic observables in closed quantum systems. Although we are far from a complete analytic understanding, quantum chaos is often seen as a strong indication that the ansatz holds true. In this paper, we address the thermalization of energy eigenstates in the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model, a maximally chaotic model of strongly-interacting Majorana fermions. We numerically investigate eigenstate thermalization for specific few-body operators in the original SYK model as well as its N = 1 supersymmetric extension and find evidence that these models satisfy ETH. In conclusion, we discuss the implications of ETH for a gravitational dual and the quantum information-theoretic properties of SYK it suggests.

2D Gravity↗

On the interplay between magnetic field and anisotropy in holographic QCD

We investigate the combined effects of anisotropy and a magnetic field in strongly interacting gauge theories by the gauge/gravity correspondence. Our main motivation is the quark-gluon plasma produced in off-central heavy-ion collisions which exhibits large anisotropy in pressure gradients as well as large external magnetic fields. We explore two different configurations, with the anisotropy either parallel or perpendicular to the magnetic field, focusing on the competition and interplay between the two. A detailed study of the RG flow in the ground state reveals a rich structure where depending on which of the two, anisotropy or magnetic field, is stronger, intermediate geometries with approximate AdS 4 × $\mathbb{R}$ and AdS 3 × $\mathbb{R}$ 2 factors arise. This competition is also manifest in the phase structure at finite temperature, specifically in the dependence of the chiral transition temperature on anisotropy and magnetic field, from which we infer the presence of inverse magnetic and anisotropic catalyses of the chiral condensate. Finally, we consider other salient observables in the theory, including the quark-antiquark potential, shear viscosity, entanglement entropy and the butterfly velocity. We demonstrate that they serve as good probes of the theory, in particular, distinguishing between the effects of the magnetic field and anisotropy in the ground and plasma states. We also find that the butterfly velocity, which codifies how fast information propagates in the plasma, exhibits a rich structure as a function of temperature, anisotropy and magnetic field, exceeding the conformal value in certain regimes.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

A subleading power operator basis for the scalar quark current

Factorization theorems play a crucial role in our understanding of the strong interaction. For collider processes they are typically formulated at leading power and much less is known about power corrections in the λ << 1 expansion. Here we present a complete basis of power suppressed operators for a scalar quark current at O(λ 2 ) in the amplitude level power expansion in the Soft Collinear Effective Theory, demonstrating that helicity selection rules significantly simplify the construction. This basis applies for the production of any color singlet scalar in qq¯¯ annihilation (such as bb¯¯→H ). We also classify all operators which contribute to the cross section at O(λ 2 ) and perform matching calculations to determine their tree level Wilson coefficients. Furthermore, these results can be exploited to study power corrections in both resummed and fixed order perturbation theory, and for analyzing the factorization properties of gauge theory amplitudes and cross sections at subleading power.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Magnetoresistance in relativistic hydrodynamics without anomalies

We present expressions for the magnetoconductivity and the magnetoresistance of a strongly interacting metal in 3 + 1 dimensions, derivable from relativistic hydrodynamics. Such an approach is suitable for ultraclean metals with emergent Lorentz invariance. When this relativistic fluid contains chiral anomalies, it is known to exhibit longitudinal negative magnetoresistance. We show that similar effects can arise in non-anomalous relativistic fluids due to the distinctive gradient expansion. In contrast with a Galilean-invariant fluid, the resistivity tensor of a dirty relativistic fluid exhibits similar angular dependence to negative magnetoresistance, even when the constitutive relations and momentum relaxation rate are isotropic. We further account for the effect of magnetic field-dependent corrections to the gradient expansion and the effects of long-wavelength impurities on magnetoresistance. We note that the holographic D3/D7 system exhibits negative magnetoresistance.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Measurement of electrons from open heavy-flavor hadron decays in Au+Au collisions at $ \sqrt{s_{\textrm{NN}}} $ = 200 GeV with the STAR detector

We report a new measurement of the production of electrons from open heavy-flavor hadron decays (HFEs) at mid-rapidity (|y| < 0.7) in Au+Au collisions at $ \sqrt{s_{\textrm{NN}}} $ = 200 GeV. Invariant yields of HFEs are measured for the transverse momentum range of 3.5 < p T < 9 GeV/c in various configurations of the collision geometry. The HFE yields in head-on Au+Au collisions are suppressed by approximately a factor of 2 compared to that in p + p collisions scaled by the average number of binary collisions, indicating strong interactions between heavy quarks and the hot and dense medium created in heavy-ion collisions. Comparison of these results with models provides additional tests of theoretical calculations of heavy quark energy loss in the quark-gluon plasma.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

A precise electron EDM constraint on CP-odd heavy-quark Yukawas

CP-odd Higgs couplings to bottom and charm quarks arise in many extensions of the standard model and are of potential interest for electroweak baryogenesis. These couplings induce a contribution to the electron EDM. The experimental limit on the latter then leads to a strong bound on the CP-odd Higgs couplings. We point out that this bound receives large QCD corrections, even though it arises from a leptonic observable. We calculate the contribution of CP-odd Higgs couplings to the bottom and charm quarks in renormalisation-group improved perturbation theory at next-to-leading order in the strong interaction, thereby reducing the uncertainty to a few percent.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

On HQET and NRQCD operators of dimension 8 and above

Effective field theories such as Heavy Quark Effective Theory (HQET) and Non Relativistic Quantum Chromo-(Electro-) dynamics NRQCD (NRQED) are indispensable tools in controlling the effects of the strong interaction. The increasing experimental precision requires the knowledge of higher dimensional operators. We present a general method that allows for an easy construction of HQET or NRQCD (NRQED) operators that contain two heavy quark or non-relativistic fields and any number of covariant derivatives. As an application of our method, we list these terms in the 1/M 4 NRQCD Lagrangian, where M is the mass of of the spin-half field.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

The running coupling of the minimal sextet composite Higgs model

We compute the renormalized running coupling of SU(3) gauge theory coupled to N f = 2 flavors of massless Dirac fermions in the 2-index-symmetric (sextet) representation. This model is of particular interest as a minimal realization of the strongly interacting composite Higgs scenario. A recently proposed finite volume gradient flow scheme is used. The calculations are performed at several lattice spacings with two different implementations of the gradient flow allowing for a controlled continuum extrapolation and particular attention is paid to estimating the systematic uncertainties. For small values of the renormalized coupling our results for the β-function agree with perturbation theory. For moderate couplings we observe a downward deviation relative to the 2-loop β-function but in the coupling range where the continuum extrapolation is fully under control we do not observe an infrared fixed point. The explored range includes the locations of the zero of the 3-loop and the 4-loop β-functions in the $\overline{MS}$ scheme. The absence of a non-trivial zero in the β-function in the explored range of the coupling is consistent with our earlier findings based on hadronic observables, the chiral condensate and the GMOR relation. The present work is the first to report continuum non-perturbative results for the sextet model.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

A magnetically induced quantum critical point in holography

Here, we investigate quantum critical points in a 2+1 dimensional gauge theory at finite chemical potential χ and magnetic field B. The gravity dual is based on 4D N = 2 Fayet-Iliopoulos gauged supergravity and the solutions we consider — that are constructed analytically — are extremal, dyonic, asymptotically AdS 4 black-branes with a nontrivial radial profile for the scalar field. We discover a line of second order fixed points at B = B c (χ) between the dyonic black brane and an extremal “thermal gas” solution with a singularity of good-type, according to the acceptability criteria of Gubser. The dual field theory is a strongly coupled nonconformal field theory at finite charge and magnetic field, related to the ABJM theory deformed by a triple trace operator Φ 3 . This line of fixed points might be useful in studying the various strongly interacting quantum critical phenomena such as the ones proposed to underlie the cuprate superconductors. We also find curious similarities between the behaviour of the VeV <Φ> under B and that of the quark condensate in 2+1 dimensional NJL models.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

New vector-like fermions and flavor physics

We study renormalizable extensions of the standard model that contain vector-like fermions in a (single) complex representation of the standard model gauge group. There are 11 models where the vector-like fermions Yukawa couple to the standard model fermions via the Higgs field. These models do not introduce additional fine-tunings. They can lead to, and are constrained by, a number of different flavor-changing processes involving leptons and quarks, as well as direct searches. An interesting feature of the models with strongly interacting vector-like fermions is that constraints from neutral meson mixings (apart from CP violation in $ {K}^0-{\overline{K}}^0 $ mixing) are not sensitive to higher scales than other flavor-changing neutral-current processes. We identify order 1/(4πM) 2 (where M is the vector-like fermion mass) one-loop contributions to the coefficients of the four-quark operators for meson mixing, that are not suppressed by standard model quark masses and/or mixing angles.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Vacuum stability and perturbativity of SU(3) scalars

We calculate the vacuum stability conditions and renormalisation group equations for the extensions of standard model with a higher colour multiplet scalar up to the representation 15' that leaves the strong interaction asymptotically free. In order to find the vacuum stability conditions, we calculate the orbit spaces for the self-couplings of the higher multiplets, which for the representations 15 and 15' of SU(3) c are highly complicated. However, if the scalar potential is linear in orbit space variables, it is sufficient to know the convex hull of the orbit space. Knowledge of the orbit spaces also facilitates the minimisation of the potentials. In contrast to the self-couplings of other multiplets, we find that the scalar quartic couplings of the representations 3 and 8 walk rather than run, remaining nearly constant and perturbative over a vast energy range. We describe the conditions for walking couplings using a schematic model. With these technical results at hand we revise earlier results of generation of new scales with large SU(3) c scalar multiplets. Our results are easily extendable to models of new physics with additional SU(3) or SU(N) gauge symmetries.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Vector SIMP dark matter

Strongly Interacting Massive Particles (SIMPs) have recently been proposed as light thermal dark matter relics. Here we consider an explicit realization of the SIMP mechanism in the form of vector SIMPs arising from an SU(2) X hidden gauge theory, where the accidental custodial symmetry protects the stability of the dark matter. We propose several ways of equilibrating the dark and visible sectors in this setup. In particular, we show that a light dark Higgs portal can maintain thermal equilibrium between the two sectors, as can a massive dark vector portal with its generalized Chern-Simons couplings to the vector SIMPs, all while remaining consistent with experimental constraints.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗