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Quantum field theory is a unifying language that pervades many areas of modern physics. The project revolves around the study of strongly-coupled quantum field theories that are not amenable to conventional perturbative techniques – with a particular focus on strongly- coupled gauge theories.
The properties of linear and nonlinear electrostatic waves in a strongly coupled electron-ion quantum plasma are investigated. In this study, the inertialess electrons are degenerate, while non-degenerate inertial ions are strongly correlated. The ion dynamics is governed by the continuity and the generalized viscoelastic momentum equations. The quantum forces associated with the quantum statistical pressure and the quantum recoil effect act on the degenerate electron fluid, whereas strong ion correlation effects are embedded in generalized viscoelastic momentum equation through the viscoelastic relaxation of ion correlations and ion fluid shear viscosities. Hence, the spectra of linear electrostatic modes are significantly affected by the strong ion coupling effect. In the weakly nonlinear limit, due to ion-ion correlations, the quantum plasma supports a dispersive shock wave, the dynamics of which is governed by the Korteweg-de Vries Burgers' equation. For a particular value of the quantum recoil effect, only monotonic shock structure is observed. Possible applications of our investigation are briefly mentioned.
We study the excited states of the pairing Hamiltonian providing an expansion for their energy in the strong coupling limit. To assess the role of the pairing interaction we apply the formalism to the case of a heavy atomic nucleus. We show that only a few statistical moments of the level distribution are sufficient to yield an accurate estimate of the energy for not too small values of the coupling G and we give the analytic expressions of the first four terms of the series. Further, we discuss the convergence radius G{sub sing} of the expansion showing that it strongly depends upon the details of the level distribution. Furthermore G{sub sing} is not related to the critical values of the coupling G{sub crit}, which characterize the physics of the pairing Hamiltonian, since it can exist even in the absence of these critical points. -- Highlights: •We study the excitation spectrum of the pairing Hamiltonian. •We provide an analytic expansion around the strong coupling limit. •We discuss the convergence radius of the expansion. •We connect the radius with the critical points of H.
Motivated by recent ''circuit QED'' experiments we study the lasing transition and spectral properties of single-qubit lasers. In the strong coupling, low-temperature regime, quantum fluctuations dominate over thermal noise and strongly influence the linewidth of the laser. When the qubit and the resonator are detuned, amplitude and phase fluctuations of the radiation field are coupled and the phase diffusion model, commonly used to describe conventional lasers, fails. We predict pronounced effects near the lasing transition, with an enhanced linewidth and nonexponential decay of the correlation functions. We cover a wide range of parameters by using two complementary approaches, one based on the Liouville equation in a Fock-state basis, covering arbitrarily strong coupling but limited to low photon numbers, the other based on the coherent-state representation, covering large photon numbers but restricted to weak or intermediate coupling.
We present a model of power law inflation generated by variation of the strong coupling constant. We then extend the model to two varying coupling constants which leads to a potential consisting of a linear combination of exponential terms. Some variants of the latter may be self-consistent and can accommodate the experimental data of the Planck 2015 and other recent experiments.
The influence of the local-field correction on the strong atom-field coupling regime are investigated using the real-cavity model. The atom is positioned at the center of a multilayer sphere. Three types of mirrors are considered: perfectly reflecting, Lorentz band gap, and Bragg-distributed ones, with special emphasis on experimental practicability. In particular, the influence of the local field on the spectral resonance lines, the Rabi oscillation frequency and decay rate, and the condition indicating the occurrence of the strong-coupling regime are studied in detail. It is shown that the local-field correction gives rise to a structureless plateau in the density of states of the electromagnetic field. The level of the plateau rises with increasing material density and/or absorption, which may eventually destroy the strong-coupling regime. The effect of the local field is especially pronounced at high-material densities due to direct energy transfer from the guest atom to the medium. At lower material density and/or absorption, variation of the material density does not seem to affect much the strong-coupling regime, except for a small shift in the resonance frequency.
For a single scalar field with unit sound speed minimally coupled to Einstein gravity, there are exactly three distinct cosmological solutions which produce a scale invariant spectrum of curvature perturbations in a dynamical attractor background, assuming vacuum initial conditions: slow-roll inflation; a slowly contracting adiabatic ekpyrotic phase, described by a rapidly-varying equation of state; and an adiabatic ekpyrotic phase on a slowly expanding background. Of these three, only inflation remains weakly coupled over a wide range of modes, while the other scenarios can produce at most 12 e-folds of scale invariant and Gaussian modes. In this paper, we investigate how allowing the speed of sound of fluctuations to evolve in time affects this classification. While in the presence of a variable sound speed there are many more scenarios which are scale invariant at the level of the two-point function, they generically suffer from strong coupling problems similar to those in the canonical case. There is, however, an exceptional case with superluminal sound speed, which suppresses non-Gaussianities and somewhat alleviates strong coupling issues. We focus on a particular realization of this limit and show these scenarios are constrained and only able to produce at most 28 e-folds of scale invariant and Gaussian perturbations. A similar bound should hold more generally - the condition results from the combined requirements of matching the observed amplitude of curvature perturbations, demanding that the Hubble parameter remain sub-Planckian and keeping non-Gaussianities under control. We therefore conclude that inflation remains the unique cosmological scenario, assuming a single degree of freedom on an attractor background, capable of producing arbitrarily many scale invariant modes while remaining weakly coupled. Alternative mechanisms must inevitably be unstable or rely on multiple degrees of freedom.
This article presents a measurement of the inclusive 3-jet production differential cross section at a proton–proton centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5fb –1 collected with the CMS detector. The analysis is based on the three jets with the highest transverse momenta. The cross section is measured as a function of the invariant mass of the three jets in a range of 445–3270 GeV and in two bins of the maximum rapidity of the jets up to a value of 2. A comparison between the measurement and the prediction from perturbative QCD at next-to-leading order is performed. Within uncertainties, data and theory are in agreement. The sensitivity of the observable to the strong coupling constant αS is studied. A fit to all data points with 3-jet masses larger than 664 GeV gives a value of the strong coupling constant of α S (M Z ) = 0.1171 ± 0.0013(exp) +0.0073 –0.0047 (theo).
In this Letter, we report compressible mode effects on relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (RMHD) turbulence in Poynting-dominated plasmas using three-dimensional numerical simulations. We decomposed fluctuations in the turbulence into 3 MHD modes (fast, slow, and Alfvén) following the procedure of mode decomposition in Cho and Lazarian, and analyzed their energy spectra and structure functions separately. We also analyzed the ratio of compressible mode to Alfvén mode energy with respect to its Mach number. We found the ratio of compressible mode increases not only with the Alfvén Mach number, but also with the background magnetization, which indicates a strong coupling between the fast and Alfvén modes. It also signifies the appearance of a new regime of RMHD turbulence in Poynting-dominated plasmas where the fast and Alfvén modes are strongly coupled and, unlike the non-relativistic MHD regime, cannot be treated separately. This finding will affect particle acceleration efficiency obtained by assuming Alfvénic critical-balance turbulence and can change the resulting photon spectra emitted by non-thermal electrons.
We review models of new physics in which dark matter arises as a composite bound state from a confining strongly-coupled non-Abelian gauge theory. We discuss several qualitatively distinct classes of composite candidates, including dark mesons, dark baryons, and dark glueballs. Here, we highlight some of the promising strategies for direct detection, especially through dark moments, using the symmetries and properties of the composite description to identify the operators that dominate the interactions of dark matter with matter, as well as dark matter self-interactions. We briefly discuss the implications of these theories at colliders, especially the (potentially novel) phenomenology of dark mesons in various regimes of the models. Throughout the review, we highlight the use of lattice calculations in the study of these strongly-coupled theories, to obtain precise quantitative predictions and new insights into the dynamics.
We provide a comprehensive study of strong coupling constants of decuplet baryons with light nonet vector mesons in the framework of light cone QCD sum rules. Using the symmetry arguments, we argue that all coupling constants entering the calculations can be expressed in terms of only one invariant function even if the SU(3){sub f} symmetry breaking effects are taken into account. We estimate the order of SU(3){sub f} symmetry violations, which are automatically considered by the employed approach.
The effect of strongly coupled plasma on the ground state photoionization cross section is studied. In the non relativistic dipole approximation, cross section is evaluated from bound-free transition matrix element. The bound and free state wave functions are obtained by solving the radial Schrodinger equation with appropriate plasma potential. We have used ion sphere potential (ISP) to incorporate the plasma effects in atomic structure calculation. This potential includes the effect of static plasma screening on nuclear charge as well as the effect of confinement due to the neighbouring ions. With ISP, the radial equation is solved using Shooting method approach for hydrogen like ions (Li{sup +2}, C{sup +5}, Al{sup +12}) and lithium like ions (C{sup +3}, O{sup +5}). The effect of strong screening and confinement is manifested as confinement resonances near the ionization threshold for both kinds of ions. The confinement resonances are very much dependent on the edge of the confining potential and die out as the plasma density is increased. Plasma effect also results in appearance of Cooper minimum in lithium like ions, which was not present in case of free lithium like ions. With increasing density the position of Cooper minimum shifts towards higher photoelectron energy. The same behaviour is also true for weakly coupled plasma where plasma effect is modelled by Debye-Huckel potential.
Epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) modes provide a new path for tailoring light–matter interactions at the nanoscale. In this paper, we analyze a strongly coupled system at near-infrared frequencies comprising plasmonic metamaterial resonators and ENZ modes supported by degenerately doped semiconductor nanolayers. In strongly coupled systems that combine optical cavities and intersubband transitions, the polariton splitting (i.e., the ratio of Rabi frequency to bare cavity frequency) scales with the square root of the wavelength, thus favoring the long-wavelength regime. In contrast, we observe that the polariton splitting in ENZ/metamaterial resonator systems increases linearly with the thickness of the nanolayer supporting the ENZ modes. In this work, we employ an indium-tin-oxide nanolayer and observe a large experimental polariton splitting of approximately 30% in the near-infrared. As a result, this approach opens up many promising applications, including nonlinear optical components and tunable optical filters based on controlling the polariton splitting by adjusting the frequency of the ENZ mode.
We construct the Liouville operator for the SU(2) classical colored Coulomb plasma for arbitrary values of the Coulomb coupling {Gamma}=V/K, the ratio of the mean Coulomb to kinetic energy. We show that its resolvent in the classical colored phase space obeys a hierarchy of equations. We use a free-streaming approximation to close the hierarchy and derive an integral equation for the time-dependent structure factor. Its reduction by projection yields hydrodynamical equations in the long-wavelength limit. We discuss the character of the hydrodynamical modes at strong coupling. The shear viscosity is shown to exhibit a minimum at {Gamma}{approx_equal}8 near the liquid point. This minimum follows from the crossover between the single-particle collisional regime which drops as 1/{Gamma}{sup 5/2} and the hydrodynamical collisional regime which rises as {Gamma}{sup 1/2}. The self-diffusion constant drops as 1/{Gamma}{sup 3/2} irrespective of the regime. We compare our results to molecular-dynamics simulations of the SU(2) colored Coulomb plasma. We also discuss the relevance of our results for the quantum and strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma (sQGP).
We show that the classical and strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma is characterized by a multiple of structure factors that obey generalized Orstein-Zernicke equations. We use the canonical partition function and its associated density functional to derive analytical equations for the density and charge monopole structure factors for arbitrary values of {Gamma}=V/K, the ratio of the mean potential to the Coulomb energy. The results are compared with SU(2) molecular dynamics simulations.
We examine the feasibility of strongly coupled stimulated Brillouin scattering as a mechanism for the plasma-based amplification of sub-picosecond pulses. In particular, we use fluid theory and particle-in-cell simulations to compare the relative advantages of Raman and Brillouin amplification over a broad range of achievable parameters.
We continue to investigate properties of the strongly coupled inflaton in a setup introduced in Chen (2008) through the AdS/CFT correspondence. These properties are qualitatively different from those in conventional inflationary models. For example, in slow-roll inflation, the inflaton velocity is not determined by the shape of potential; the fine-tuning problem concerns the dual infrared geometry instead of the potential; the non-Gaussianities such as the local form can naturally become large.
We study models of inflation with two scalar fields and non-canonical kinetic terms, focusing on the case in which the curvature and isocurvature perturbations are strongly coupled to each other. In the regime where a heavy mode can be identified and integrated out, we clarify the passage from the full two-field model to an effectively single-field description. However, the strong coupling sets a new scale in the system, and affects the evolution of the perturbations as well as the beginning of the regime of validity of the effective field theory. In particular, the predictions of the model are sensitive to the relative hierarchy between the coupling and the mass of the heavy mode. As a result, observables are not given unambiguously in terms of the parameters of an effectively single field model with non-trivial sound speed. Finally, the requirement that the sound horizon crossing occurs within the regime of validity of the effective theory leads to a lower bound on the sound speed. Our analysis is done in an extremely simple toy model of slow-roll inflation, which is chosen for its tractability, but is non-trivial enough to illustrate the richness of the dynamics in non-canonical multi-field models.