Search

We study chiral symmetry restoration by analyzing thermal properties of QCD's (pseudo-)Goldstone bosons, especially the pion. The meson properties are obtained from the spectral densities of mesonic imaginary-time correlation functions. To obtain the correlation functions, we solve the Dyson-Schwinger equations and the inhomogeneous Bethe-Salpeter equations in the leading symmetry-preserving rainbow-ladder approximation. In the chiral limit, the pion and its partner sigma degenerate at the critical temperature $T_c$. At $T \gtrsim T_c$, it is found that the pion rapidly dissociates, which signals deconfinement phase transition. Beyond the chiral limit, the pion dissociation temperature can be used to define the pseudo-critical temperature of chiral phase crossover, which is consistent with that obtained by the maximum point of the chiral susceptibility. The parallel analysis for kaon and pseudoscalar $s\bar{s}$ suggests that heavy mesons may survive above $T_c$.

We determine the leading Fock-state light front wave functions (LF-LFWFs) of the $\rho$ and J/$\psi$ mesons, for the first time from the Dyson-Schwinger and Bethe-Salpeter equations (DS-BSEs) approach. A unique advantage of this method is that it renders a direct extraction of LF-LFWFs in presence of a number of higher Fock-states. Modulated by the current quark mass and driven by the dynamical chiral symmetry breaking (DCSB), we find the $\rho$ and $J/\psi$ LF-LFWFs different in profile, i.e., the former are broadly distributed in $x$ (the longitudinal light-cone momentum fraction of meson carried by quark) while the latter are narrow. Moreover, the $\rho$ LF-LFWFs contribute less than 50% to the total Fock-state normalization, suggesting considerable higher Fock-states in $\rho$. We then use these LF-LFWFs to study the diffractive $\rho$ and $J/\psi$ electroproduction within the dipole picture. The calculated cross section shows general agreement with HEAR data, except for growing discrepancy in $\rho$ production at low photon virtuality. Our work provides a first dipole picture analysis on diffractive $\rho$ electroproduction that confronts the parton nature of the light (anti)quarks., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures

The chiral phase transition and equation of state are studied within a new self-consistent mean-field approximation of the two-flavor Nambu$-$Jona-Lasinio model. In this newly developed model, modifications to the chemical potential $\mu$ and chiral chemical potential $\mu_5$ is naturally included by adding vector and axial-vector channels from Fierz-transformed Lagrangian to the standard Lagrangian. In proper-time scheme, the chiral phase transition is a crossover in the $T-\mu$ plane. But when $\mu_5$ is increased, our study shows that there may exist first order phase transition. Furthermore, the chiral imbalance will soften the equation of state of quark matter. The mass-radius relations and tidal deformability of quark stars are calculated. As $\mu_5$ increases, the maximum mass and radius decrease. The vector channel and axial-vector channel have opposite influence on the equation of state. However, when EOS is constrained by astronomical observations, the shape of the mass-radius curve can be used to determine whether there is chiral imbalance in the dense object, and thus indirectly proving the CP violation in the dense matter. Our study shows a different influence of the chiral imbalance on the chiral phase transition in contrary to tree-momentum-cutoff scheme., Comment: 7pages and 7 figures

The ground state of matter may be strange quark matter (SQM), not hadronic matter. A whole sequence of SQM objects, ranging from strange quark stars and strange quark dwarfs to strange quark planets, can stably exist according to this SQM hypothesis. A strange dwarf has a mass similar to that of a normal white dwarf but could harbor an extremely dense SQM core (with a density as large as $\sim \rm 4\times10^{14}\,g\,cm^{-3} $) at the center so that its radius can be correspondingly smaller. In this study, we try to search for strange dwarfs among the observed "white dwarfs" by considering their difference in the mass-radius relation. Seven strange dwarf candidates are identified in this way, whose masses are in the range of $\sim 0.02$ -- $0.12 M_{\odot}$, with the radii narrowly distributed in $\sim$ 9,000 -- 15,000 km. The seven objects are LSPM J0815+1633, LP 240-30, BD+20 5125B, LP 462-12, WD J1257+5428, 2MASS J13453297+4200437, and SDSS J085557.46+053524.5. Compared with white dwarfs of similar mass, these candidates are obviously smaller in radius. Further observations with large radio/infrared/optical telescopes on these interesting candidates are solicited., Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 1 table

We study the chiral phase transition inside a rotating cylinder within the framework of the Namb--Jona-Lasinio model. A spectral boundary condition is imposed to avoid faster than light. We investigate how the geometry of the cylinder and rotation influence the chiral phase transition at finite temperature and chemical potential. The inhomogeneous effects caused by the finite size and rotation are also taken into account. It is found that finite size will reduce the chiral transition temperature and raises the chiral transition chemical potential, while the rotation reduces both the chiral transition temperature and chemical potential. In addition, we discuss the implications of our results in heavy-ion collisions and equation of states of neutron star.

Within the framework of Dyson--Schwinger equations of QCD, we study the effect of finite volume on the chiral phase transition in a sphere with the MIT boundary condition. We find that the chiral quark condensate $\langle\bar{\psi} \psi\rangle$ and pseudotransition temperature $T_{pc}$ of the crossover decreases as the volume decreases, until there is no chiral crossover transition at last. We find that the system for $R = \infty $\ fm is indistinguishable from $R=10$ fm and there is a significant decrease in $T_{pc}$ with $R$ as $R<4$ fm. When $R<1.5$ fm, there is no chiral transition in the system., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures

The self-consistent mean field approximation of two-flavor NJL model with introducing a free parameter $\alpha$ to reflect the competition between "direct" channel and the "exchange" channel, is employed to study QCD phase structure at finite isospin chemical potential $\mu_I$, finite baryon chemical potential $\mu_B$ and finite temperature $T$, especially the location of the QCD critical point. It is found that, for fixed isospin chemical potentials the lower temperature of phase transition is obtained with $\alpha$ increasing in the $T-\mu_I$ plane, and the largest difference of the phase transition temperature with different $\alpha$'s appears at $\mu_I \sim 1.5m_{\pi}$. At $\mu_I=0$ the temperature of the QCD critical end point (CEP) decreases with $\alpha$ increasing, while the critical baryon chemical potential increases. At high isospin chemical potential ($\mu_I=500$ MeV), the temperature of the QCD tricritical point (TCP) increases with $\alpha$ increasing, and in the regions of low temperature the system will transit from pion superfluidity phase to the normal phase as $\mu_B$ increases. At low temperatures, the critical temperature of QCD phase transition with different $\alpha$'s rapidly increases with $\mu_I$ at the beginning, and then increases smoothly around $\mu_I>300$ MeV. In high baryon density region, the increase of the isospin chemical potential will raise the critical baryon chemical potential of phase transition., Comment: 7 pages, 9 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2003.02988

In this proceeding, we review our recent work using deep convolutional neural network (CNN) to identify the nature of the QCD transition in a hybrid modeling of heavy-ion collisions. Within this hybrid model, a viscous hydrodynamic model is coupled with a hadronic cascade "after-burner". As a binary classification setup, we employ two different types of equations of state (EoS) of the hot medium in the hydrodynamic evolution. The resulting final-state pion spectra in the transverse momentum and azimuthal angle plane are fed to the neural network as the input data in order to distinguish different EoS. To probe the effects of the fluctuations in the event-by-event spectra, we explore different scenarios for the input data and make a comparison in a systematic way. We observe a clear hierarchy in the predictive power when the network is fed with the event-by-event, cascade-coarse-grained and event-fine-averaged spectra. The carefully-trained neural network can extract high-level features from pion spectra to identify the nature of the QCD transition in a realistic simulation scenario., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, Quark Matter 2019, will be published in Nucl. Phys. A

We apply the cannonical quantization procedure to the Dirac field inside a spherical boundary with rotating coordinates. The rotating quantum states with two kinds of boundary conditions, namely, spectral and MIT boundary conditions, are defined. To avoid faster-than-light, we require the speed on the surface to be less than the speed of light. For this situation, the definition of vacuum is unique and identical with the Minkowski vacuum. Finally, we calculate the thermal expectation value of the fermion condensate in a thermal equilibrium rotating fermion field and find it depends on the boundary condition.

We study the chirally imbalanced hot and dense strongly interacting matter by means of the Dyson-Schwinger equations (DSEs). The chiral phase diagram is studied in the presence of chiral chemical potential $\mu_5$. The chiral quark condensate $\langle \bar{\psi} \psi \rangle$ is obtained with the Cornwall-Jackiw-Tomboulis (CJT) effective action in concert with the Rainbow truncation. Catalysis effect of dynamical chiral symmetry breaking (DCSB) by $\mu_5$ is observed. We examine with two popular gluon models and consistency is found within the DSE approach, as well as in comparison with lattice QCD. The CEP location $(\mu_E,T_E)$ shifts toward larger $T_E$ but constant $\mu_E$ as $\mu_5$ increases. A technique is then introduced to compute the chiral charge density $n_5$ from the fully dressed quark propagator. We find the $n_5$ generally increases with temperature $T$, quark number chemical potential $\mu$ and $\mu_5$. Since the chiral magnetic effect (CME) is typically investigated with peripheral collisions, we also investigate the finite size effect on $n_5$ and find an increase in $n_5$ with smaller system size.

A symmetry-preserving continuum approach to meson bound-states in quantum field theory, employed elsewhere to describe numerous $\pi$- and $K$-meson electroweak processes, is used to analyse leptonic and semileptonic decays of $D_{(s)}$ mesons. Each semileptonic transition is conventionally characterised by the value of the dominant form factor at $t=0$ and the following results are obtained herein: $f_+^{D_s\to K}(0) = 0.673(40)$; $f_+^{D\to \pi}(0)=0.618(31)$; and $f_+^{D\to K}(0)=0.756(36)$. Working with the computed $t$-dependence of these form factors and standard averaged values for $|V_{cd}|$, $|V_{cs}|$, one arrives at the following predictions for the associated branching fractions: ${\cal B}_{D_s^+\to K^0 e^+ \nu_e} = 3.31(33)\times 10^{-3}$; ${\cal B}_{D^0\to \pi^- e^+ \nu_e} = 2.73(22)\times 10^{-3}$; and ${\cal B}_{D^0\to K^- e^+ \nu_e} = 3.83(28)$%. Alternatively, using the calculated $t$-dependence, agreement with contemporary empirical results for these branching fractions requires $|V_{cd}|=0.221(9)$, $|V_{us}|=0.953(34)$. With all $D_{(s)}$ transition form factors in hand, the nature of SU$(3)$-flavour symmetry-breaking in this array of processes can be analysed; and just as in the $\pi$-$K$ sector, the magnitude of such effects is found to be determined by the scales associated with emergent mass generation in the Standard Model, not those originating with the Higgs mechanism., Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables

We study the chiral phase transition of the two-flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model in a rotating sphere, which includes both rotation and finite size effects. We find that rotation leads to a suppression of the chiral condensate at a finite temperature, while its effects are smaller than the finite size effects. Our work can be helpful to study the effects relevant to rotation in heavy-ion collisions in a more realistic way.

The self-consistent mean field approximation of two-flavor NJL model, which introduces a free parameter $\alpha$ ($\alpha$ reflects the weight of different interaction channels), is employed to investigate the contributions of the vector-channel at finite isospin chemical potential $\mu_I$ and zero baryon chemical potential $\mu_B$ and zero temperature $T$. The calculations show that the consideration of the vector-channel contributions leads to lower value of pion condensate in superfluid phase, compared with the standard Lagrangian of NJL model ($\alpha=0$). In superfluid phase, we also obtain lower isospin number density, and the discrepancy is getting larger with the increase of isospin potential. Compared with the recent results from Lattice QCD, the isospin density and energy density we obtained with $\alpha=0.5$ agree with the data of lattice well. In the phase diagram in the $T-\mu_I$ plane for $\mu_B=0$, we can see that the difference of the critical temperatures of phase transition between the results with $\alpha=0$ and $\alpha=0.5$ is up to $3\%-5\%$ for a fixed isospin potential. All of these indicate that the vector channels play an important role in isospin medium., Comment: 6 figures, 10 pages

We consider the dynamics of a spin-1/2 particle constrained to move in an arbitrary space curve with an external electric and magnetic field applied. With the aid of gauge theory, we successfully decouple the tangential and normal dynamics and derive the effective Hamiltonian. A new type of quantum potential called SU(2) Zeeman interaction appears, which is induced by the electric field and couples spin and intrinsic orbital angular momentum. Based on the Hamiltonian, we discuss the spin precession for zero intrinsic orbital angular momentum case and the energy splitting caused by the SU(2) Zeeman interaction for a helix as examples, showing the combined effect of geometry and external field. The new interaction may bring new approaches to manipulate quantum states in spintronics.

For a particle confined to the two-dimensional helical surface embedded in four-dimensional (4D) Euclidean space, the effective Hamiltonian is deduced in the thin-layer quantization formalism. We find that the gauge structure of the effective dynamics is determined by torsion, which plays the role of U(1) gauge potential, and find that the topological structure of associated states is defined by orbital spin which originates from 4D space. Strikingly, the response to torsion contributes a quantum Hall effect, and the response to the deformation of torsion contributes Hall viscosity that is perfectly presented as a simultaneous occurrence of multiple channels for the quantum Hall effect. This result directly provides a way to probe Hall viscosity., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures

In this work we use the equation of state (EOS) of (2+1)-flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model to study the structure of the strange quark star. With a new free parameter $\alpha$, the Lagrangian is constructed by two parts, the original NJL Lagrangian and the Fierz transformation of it, as $\mathcal{L}=(1-\alpha)\mathcal{L}_{NJL}+\alpha\mathcal{L}_{Fierz}$. To determine the range of $\alpha$, we compare the binding energies in the 2-flavor and (2+1)-flavor cases. We also consider the constraints of chemical equilibrium and electric charge neutrality in the strange quark star and choose six representative EOSs with different $\alpha$ and $B$ (bag constant) to study their influence on the structure of the strange quark star. As a result, we find that a larger $\alpha$ and a smaller $B$ corresponds to a heavier star with a stiffer EOS. Furthermore, the heaviest strange quark star is in agreement with not only the recent mass observation of PSR J0740+6620 and the X-ray observations on radius measurements, but also the constraint on tidal deformability of GW170817., Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures

With a interpolation method on the P-$\mu$ plane, a hybrid equation of state is explored. The quark phase is described by our newly developed self-consistent two-flavor Nambu$-$Jona-Lasinio model. It retains the contribution from the vector channel in the Fierz-transformed Lagrangian by introducing a weighting parameter $\alpha$ [Chin. Phys. C \textbf{43}, 084102 (2019)]. In the hadron phase we use the relativistic mean-field theory. We study the dependence of hybrid EOS and mass-radius relation on $\alpha$. It is found that increasing $\alpha$ makes the hybrid EOS softer in the medium pressure. We can get stellar mass larger than $2M_\odot$. Further, we calculate the tidal deformability $\tilde\Lambda$ for binary stars and compare with recent analysis GW170817 [Phys. Rev. X \textbf{9}, 011001 (2019)]., Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables

A symmetry-preserving approach to the two valence-body continuum bound-state problem is used to calculate the elastic electromagnetic form factors of the $\rho$-meson and subsequently to study the evolution of vector-meson form factors with current-quark mass. To facilitate a range of additional comparisons, $K^\ast$ form factors are also computed. The analysis reveals that: vector mesons are larger than pseudoscalar mesons; composite vector mesons are non-spherical, with magnetic and quadrupole moments that deviate $\sim 30$\% from point-particle values; in many ways, vector-meson properties are as much influenced by emergent mass as those of pseudoscalars; and vector meson electric form factors possess a zero at spacelike momentum transfer. Qualitative similarities between the electric form factors of the $\rho$ and the proton, $G_E^p$, are used to argue that the character of emergent mass in the Standard Model can force a zero in $G_E^p$. Morover, the existence of a zero in vector meson electric form factors entails that a single-pole vector meson dominance model can only be of limited use in estimating properties of off-shell vector mesons, providing poor guidance for systems in which the Higgs-mechanism of mass generation is dominant., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, 1 table

We investigate a $(n+1)$-dimensional generalized Randall-Sundrum model with an anisotropic metric which has three different scale factors. One obtain a positive effective cosmological constant $\Omega_{eff}\sim10^{-124}$ (in Planck unit) which only need a solution $kr\simeq50-80$ without fine tuning, and both the visible and hidden brane tensions are positive which results in the two branes to be stable. Then, we find that the Hubble parameter is seem to be a constant in a large region near its minimum, thus causing the acceleration of the universe. Therefore, the fine tuning problem also can be solved in this model. Meanwhile, the scale of extra dimensions is smaller than the observed scale but greater than the Planck length. This demonstrates that the observed present acceleration of the universe is caused by the extra-dimensional evolution rather than dark energy., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures

We employ a new self-consistent mean field approximation of NJL model, which introduces a free parameter $\alpha$ ($\alpha$ reflects the weight of different interaction channels), to study the effects of the chiral chemical potential $\mu_5$ on QCD phase structure, especially the location of the QCD critical end point (CEP). We find that, at a high temperature, the critical temperature of QCD phase transition smoothly increases with $\mu_5$ at the beginning, and then decreases rapidly. At low temperature and high baryon density region, the increase of the chiral chemical potential will reduce the critical chemical potential of phase transition. The temperature of the CEP shows a non-monotonic dependence on the chiral chemical potential with a long plateau around the maximum. At $\mu_5=0$, we found that the CEP will disappear when the $\alpha$ value is larger than 0.71 and will reappear when the $\mu_5$ increases. This study is important for exploring the QCD phase structure and the location of CEP in chiral imbalanced systems., Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures

Using deep convolutional neural network (CNN), the nature of the QCD transition can be identified from the final-state pion spectra from hybrid model simulations of heavy-ion collisions that combines a viscous hydrodynamic model with a hadronic cascade "after-burner". Two different types of equations of state (EoS) of the medium are used in the hydrodynamic evolution. The resulting spectra in transverse momentum and azimuthal angle are used as the input data to train the neural network to distinguish different EoS. Different scenarios for the input data are studied and compared in a systematic way. A clear hierarchy is observed in the prediction accuracy when using the event-by-event, cascade-coarse-grained and event-fine-averaged spectra as input for the network, which are about 80%, 90% and 99%, respectively. A comparison with the prediction performance by deep neural network (DNN) with only the normalized pion transverse momentum spectra is also made. High-level features of pion spectra captured by a carefully-trained neural network were found to be able to distinguish the nature of the QCD transition even in a simulation scenario which is close to the experiments., Comment: 16 pages, 21 figures. Updated version for the publication in Eur. Phys. J. C

Noninteracting electrons confined to a corrugated surface are investigated in magnetic field, and the associated effective Pauli equation is given analytically by the thin-layer quantization scheme. Interestingly, the Zeeman splitting gaps can be adjusted by curvature, and there is a geometric potential induced by curvature. Further, we discuss the spin-dependent transport properties for confined electrons by numerical calculation. More interestingly, we find that the spin polarization induced by curvature becomes substantial when the incident energy has small value. The results are considerable for a spin transistor with small spin current., Comment: 5 pages, 7 figures

In the spirit of the thin-layer quantization scheme, we give the effective Hamiltonian describing the noninteracting electrons confined to an annular corrugated surface, and find that the geometrically induced potential is considerably influenced by corrugations. By using numerical calculation, we investigate the eigenenergies and the corresponding eigenstates, and find that the transition energies can be sufficiently improved by adding corrugations. Particularly, the transition energy between the adjacent eigenstates corresponds to energy levels difference based on the wavefunction of annular wire, and the number of the energy levels is equal to the number of corrugations. And the larger magnitude of corrugations is capable of increasing the number of bound states. In addition, the distribution of ground state probability density is reconstructed by the corrugations, and the energy shift is generated., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures (in press)

Since the true ground state of the hadrons may be strange quark matter (SQM), pulsars may actually be strange stars rather than neutron stars. According to this SQM hypothesis, strange planets can also stably exist. The density of normal matter planets can hardly be higher than 30 g cm$^{-3}$. As a result, they will be tidally disrupted when its orbital radius is less than $\sim 5.6\times10^{10} \rm \, cm $, or when the orbital period ($P_{\rm orb}$) is less than $ \sim \rm 6100\, s $. On the contrary, a strange planet can safely survive even when it is very close to the host, due to its high density. The feature can help us identify SQM objects. In this study, we have tried to search for SQM objects among close-in exoplanets orbiting around pulsars. Encouragingly, it is found that four pulsar planets (XTE J1807-294 b, XTE J1751-305 b, PSR 0636 b, PSR J1807-2459A b) completely meet the criteria of $P_{\rm orb} < \rm 6100\, s $, and are thus good candidates for SQM planets. The orbital periods of two other planets (PSR J1719+14 b and PSR J2051-0827 b) are only slightly higher than the criteria. They could be regarded as potential candidates. Additionally, we find that the periods of five white dwarf planets (GP Com b, V396 Hya b, J1433 b, WD 0137-349 b, and SDSS J1411+2009 b) are less than 0.1 days. We argue that they might also be SQM planets. It is further found that the persistent gravitational wave emissions from at least three of these close-in planetary systems are detectable to LISA. More encouragingly, the advanced LIGO and Einstein Telescope are able to detect the gravitational wave bursts produced by the merger events of such SQM planetary systems, which will provide a unique test for the SQM hypothesis., Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables, comments and suggestions are welcome

The structure of light quark star is studied within a new two-flavor NJL model. By retaining the contribution from the vector term in the Fierz-transformed Lagrangian, a two-solar-mass pure quark star is achieved. To overcome the disadvantage of three-momentum truncation in the regularisation procedure, we introduce the proper-time regularisation. We also employ the newly proposed definition of vacuum pressure, in which the quasi-Wigner vacuum (corresponding to the quasi-Winger solution of the gap equation) is used as the reference ground state. Free parameter includes only a mixing constant $\alpha$ which weighs contribution from Fierz-transformed Lagrangian. We constrain $\alpha$ to be around $0.9$ by the observed mass of pulsars $PSR J0348+0432$ and $PSR J1614-2230$. We find the calculated surface energy density meets the requirement ($> 2.80\times10^{14}$g/cm$^3 $). Besides, for a 1.4 solar mass star, the tidal Love number $k_2$ and deformability $\Lambda$ are calculated which satisfies the constrain $200 < \Lambda < 800$.

We investigate the statistical distribution for ideal Bose gases with constant particle density in the 3D box of volume $V=L^{3}$. By changing linear size $L$ and imposing different boundary conditions on the system, we present a numerical analysis on the characteristic temperature and condensate fraction, and find that the smaller linear size is efficient to increase the characteristic temperature and condensate fraction. Moreover, there is a singularity under the antiperiodic boundary condition., Comment: 6 pages, 10 figures

To solve the cosmological constant fine tuning problem, we investigate a $(n+1)$-dimensional generalized Randall-Sundrum brane world scenario with two $(n-1)$-branes instead of two 3-branes. Adopting an anisotropic metric ansatz, we obtain the positive effective cosmological constant $\Omega_{eff}$ of order $10^{-124}$ and only require a solution $\simeq50-80$. Meanwhile, both the visible and hidden branes are stable because their tensions are positive. Therefore, the fine tuning problem can be solved quite well. Furthermore, the Hubble parameter $H_{1}(z)$ as a function of redshift $z$ is in good agreement with cosmic chronometers dataset. The evolution of the universe naturally shifts from deceleration to acceleration. This demonstrates that the evolution of the universe is intrinsically an extra-dimensional phenomenon. It can be seen as a dynamic model of dark energy which is driven by the evolution of the extra dimensions on the brane., Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures

We investigate a 6d generalized Randall-Sundrum brane world scenario with a bulk cosmological constant. It is shown that each stress-energy tensor $T_{ab}^{i}$ on the brane is similar to a constant vacuum energy. This is consistent with the Randall-Sundrum model in which each 3-brane Lagrangian separated out a constant vacuum energy. By adopting an anisotropic metric ansatz, we obtain the 5d Friedmann-Robertson-Walker field equations. At a little later period, the expansion of the universe is proportional to $t^{\frac{1}{2}}$ which is as similar as the period of the radiation-dominated. We also investigate the case with two $a(t)$ and two $b(t)$. In a large region of $t$, we obtain the 3d effective cosmological constant $\Lambda_{eff}=-2\Omega/3>0$ which is independent of the integral constant. Here the scale factor is exponential expansion which is consistent with our present observation of the universe. Our results demonstrate that it is possible to construct a model which solves the dark energy problem, meanwhile guaranteeing a positive brane tension., Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure

As is pointed out in a recent work (Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 222001), quark matter may not be strange. Inspired by this argument, we use a new self-consistent mean field approximation method to study the equation of state of cold dense matter within the framework of the two-flavor NJL model. Then the mass-radius relationship of two-flavor pure quark stars is studied. In the new self-consistent mean field approximation method we introduced, there is a free parameter $\alpha$, which reflects the weight of different interaction channels. In principal, $\alpha$ should be determined by experiments rather than the self-consistent mean field approximation itself. In this paper, thus, the influence of the variation of $\alpha$ on the critical chemical potential of chiral phase transition and the stiffness of the EOS are thoroughly explored. It is found that the stiffness of EOS can be increased greatly to support a two-solar-mass pure quark star when $\alpha$ is greater than 0.95. This means that current theoretical calculations and astronomical observations cannot rule out the possibility of a two-flavor pure quark star., Comment: 6 pages,5 figures, 2tables

Electroproduction form factors describing the $\gamma^\ast p \to \Delta^+(1232), \Delta^+(1600)$ transitions are computed using a fully-dynamical diquark-quark approximation to the Poincar\'e-covariant three-body bound-state problem in relativistic quantum field theory. In this approach, the $\Delta(1600)$ is an analogue of the Roper resonance in the nucleon sector, appearing as the simplest radial excitation of the $\Delta(1232)$. Precise measurements of the $\gamma^\ast p \to \Delta^+(1232)$ transition already exist on $0 \leq Q^2 \lesssim 8\,$GeV$^2$ and the calculated results compare favourably with the data outside the meson-cloud domain. The predictions for the $\gamma^\ast p \to \Delta^+(1600)$ magnetic dipole and electric quadrupole transition form factors are consistent with the empirical values at the real photon point, and extend to $Q^2 \approx 6 m_p^2$, enabling a meaningful direct comparison with experiment once analysis of existing data is completed. In both cases, the electric quadrupole form factor is particularly sensitive to deformation of the $\Delta$-baryons. Interestingly, whilst the $\gamma^\ast p \to \Delta^+(1232)$ transition form factors are larger in magnitude than those for $\gamma^\ast p \to \Delta^+(1600)$ in some neighbourhood of the real photon point, this ordering is reversed on $Q^2 \gtrsim 2 m_p^2$, suggesting that the $\gamma^\ast p \to \Delta^+(1600)$ transition is more localised in configuration space., Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables

Within the framework of Dyson-Schwinger equations and by means of Multiple Reflection Expansion, we study the finite volume effects on the chiral phase transition in a sphere, especially discuss its influence on the location of the possible critical end point (CEP). According to our calculations, when we take the sphere instead of cube as a research, the influence of finite volume effects on phase transition is not as significant as previously calculated. For instance, as the radius of spherical volume decreases from infinite to $2 \mathrm{fm}$, at zero chemical potential and finite temperature, the critical temperature $T_{c}$ has only a slight drop. And at finite chemical potential and finite temperature, the location of CEP shifts toward smaller temperature and higher chemical potential, but the amplitude of variation does not exceed $20\%$. So we find that not only the size of the volume, but also the shape of the volume will have a considerable impact on the phase transition.

By analyzing the vectorial Helmholtz equation within the thin-layer approach, we find that light acquires a novel geometrical phase, in addition to the usual one (the optical Berry phase), during the propagation along a curved path. Unlike the optical Berry phase, the novel geometrical phase is induced by the transverse spin along the binormal direction and associated with the curvature of the curve. Furthermore, we show a novel Hall effect of light induced by the torsion of the curve and associated with the transverse spin along the binormal direction, which is different from the usual spin Hall effect of light. Finally, we demonstrate that the usual and novel geometrical phase phenomena are described by different geometry-induced U(1) gauge fields in different adiabatic approximations. In the nonadiabatic case, these gauge fields are united in one effective equation by SO(3) group.

We first derive the transverse Ward-Takahashi identities (WTI) of 3-dimensional quantum electrodynamics (QED$_3$) by means of the canonical quantization method and the path integration method, and then prove for the first time that QED$_3$ is strictly solvable based on the transverse WTI and the longitudinal WTI, that is, the full vector and tensor vertices functions can be expressed in term of the fermion propagators in QED$_3$. Further, we discuss the effect of different $\gamma$ matrix representations on the full fermion-boson vertex function. It is found that the full vector vertex function does not depend on the different $\gamma$ matrix representation we use, \textit{i.e.}, it does not depend on whether we use 4 $\times$ 4 representation or 2 $\times$ 2 representation. But the tensor vertex function depends on the representation we use., Comment: 6 pages, 0 figures

In this paper, we study the pseudo-Wigner solution of the quark gap equation with a recently proposed algorithm in the framework of the (2+1)-flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model. We find that for the current quark mass $m_{\rm u,d}=5.5$ MeV and chemical potential $\mu<\mu_{\rm TCP}=272.5$ MeV, the Nambu solution and the positive pseudo-Wigner solution obtained via this algorithm is consistent with the physical solution obtained with the iterative method. Furthermore, the algorithm we used can help to illustrate the evolution of the solutions of the gap equation from the chiral limit to non-chiral limit and gives a prediction where the crossover line is located in the phase diagram for $\mu<272.5$ MeV. In addition, we also study the chiral susceptibilities as well as the loss of solutions for different chemical potentials., Comment: 9 pages, 12 figures

For an electron confined to a surface reconstructed by double-frequency corrugations, we give the effective Hamiltonian by the formula of geometric influences, obtain an additive scalar potential induced by curvature that consists of attractive wells with different depth. The difference is generated by the multiple frequency of the double-frequency corrugation. Subsequently, we investigate the effects of geometric potential on the transmission probability, and find the resonant tunneling peaks becoming rapidly sharper and the transmission gaps being substantially widened with increasing the multiple frequency. As a potential application, double-frequency corrugations can be employed to select electrons with particular incident energy, as an electronic switch, which are more effective than a single-frequency ones., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures

In the spirit of the thin-layer quantization scheme, we give the effective Shr\"{o}dinger equation for a particle confined to a corrugated torus, in which the geometric potential is substantially changed by corrugation. We find the attractive wells reconstructed by the corrugation not being at identical depths, which is strikingly different from that of a corrugated nanotube, especially in the inner side of the torus. By numerically calculating the transmission probability, we find that the resonant tunneling peaks and the transmission gaps are merged and broadened by the corrugation of the inner side of torus. These results show that the quarter corrugated torus can be used not only to connect two tubes with different radiuses in different directions, but also to filter the particles with particular incident~energies., Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures

By considering the spin connection, we deduce the effective equation for a spin-1/2 particle confined to a curved surface with the non-relativistic limit and in the thin-layer quantization formalism. We obtain a pseudo-magnetic field and an effective spin-orbit interaction generated by the spin connection. Geometrically, the pseudo-magnetic field is proportional to the Gaussian curvature and the effective spin-orbit interaction is determined by the Weingarten curvature tensor. Particularly, we find that the pseudo-magnetic field and the effective spin-orbit interaction can be employed to separate the electrons with different spin orientations. All these results are demonstrated in two examples, a straight cylindrical surface and a bent one.

In this paper, we use the recent updated source properties of GW170817 to constrain the hybrid equation of state (EOS) constructed by a three-window modeling between the hadronic EOS and quark EOS. Specifically, the hadronic EOS is described by NL3$\omega\rho$ model whose corresponding pure neutron star (NS) is already excluded by the constraint of tidal deformability (TD) from GW170817, and the quark EOS is calculated with 2+1 flavors Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model. We also consider other four constraints on the hybrid EOS. As a result, we find the parameter set ($B^{\frac{1}{4}}, \tilde{\mu}, \Gamma$) can be well constrained, indicating the possible existence of the hybrid star (HS) with a crossover inside. The type of the two stars in the binary system for nine representative hybrid EOSs is shown in this paper too. Furthermore, the HSs restricted by five constraints do not suggest a pure quark core but a mixed-phase in center.

We revisit the calculation of multiple parton scattering of a heavy quark in nuclei within the framework of recently improved high-twist factorization formalism, in which gauge invariance is ensured by a delicate setup of the initial partons' transverse momenta. We derive a new result for medium modified heavy quark fragmentation functions in deeply inelastic scattering. It is consistent with the previous calculation of light quark energy loss in the massless limit, but leads to a new correction term in the heavy quark case, which vanishes in the soft gluon radiation limit. We show numerically the significance of the new correction term in the calculation of heavy quark energy loss as compared to previous studies and with soft gluon radiation approximation., Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures. Updated version for upcoming publication in Phys. Rev. D

Using realistic quark propagators and meson Bethe-Salpeter amplitudes based on the Dyson-Schwinger equations, we calculate the pion and kaon's valence parton distribution functions (PDF) through the modified impulse approximation. The PDFs we obtained at hadronic scale have the purely valence characteristic and exhibit both dynamical chiral symmetry breaking and SU(3) flavor symmetry breaking effects. A new calculation technique is introduced to determine the valence PDFs with precision. Through NLO DGLAP evolution, our result is compared with pion and kaon valence PDF data at experimental scale. Good agreement is found in the case of pion, while deviation emerges for kaon. We point out this situation can be resolved by incorporating gluon contributions into the mesons if the pion hosts more gluons than kaon nonperturbatively.

X-ray flares, lasting for $\sim 100 - 1000$ s in the X-ray band, are often observed following gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). The physical origin of X-ray flares is still unknown merely with the temporal/spectral information. On the other hand, some polarimeters are expected to be launched within several years thanks to the increasing interest on astronomical X-ray polarimetry. Here, by assuming that X-ray flares are synchrotron radiation from relativistic spherical shells, we show that the linear polarization degree during the rising phase of an X-ray flare is much higher for the emitting region with toroidal magnetic fields than that with random magnetic fields. In the decay phase of the flare, the evolution of the polarization degree is determined by the curvature effect of the emitting shell, which is a natural feature of jet scenarios for flares. Therefore, the measurement of the polarization of X-ray flares would provide a useful tool to probe the configuration of magnetic fields in the emission region, and may even help to test the curvature effect. The information on the magnetic configuration can further help us to understand the properties of GRB jets., Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, accepted by The Astrophysical Journal

It is thought that strong interactions within the Standard Model can generate bound-states in which non-Abelian gauge-bosons play a dual role, serving both as force and matter fields. In this context we introduce a novel approach to the hybrid-meson (valence-gluon+quark+antiquark) bound-state problem in relativistic quantum field theory. Exploiting the existence of strong two-body correlations in the gluon-quark, $q_g=[gq]$, and gluon-antiquark, $\bar q_g=[g\bar q]$ channels, we argue that a sound description of hybrid properties can be obtained by solving a coupled-pair of effectively two-body equations; and, consequently, that hybrids may be viewed as highly-correlated $q_g \bar q \leftrightarrow q \bar q_g$ bound-states. Analogies may be drawn between this picture of hybrid structure and that of baryons, in which quark+quark (diquark) correlations play a key role. The potential of this formulation is illustrated by calculating the spectrum of light-quark isovector hybrid mesons., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, 1 table

In this paper, we use the equation of state based on a modification of 2+1 flavors Nambu-Jona- Lasinio (NJL) model to study the quark matter of hybrid stars. For comparison, we utilize five EOSs of the relativistic mean-field (RMF) model to describe the hadronic phase. With the 3- window crossover interpolation approach, we try to construct relatively soft hybrid EOSs but find the maximum masses of hybrid stars do not differ too much. The results are quite close to two solar mass, which is consistent with the mass constraint of PSR J0348+0432. Furthermore it is noteworthy that the heaviest stable stars have central densities higher than that of the deconfinement transition thus suggesting a pure quark core in the hybrid star.

We propose a new algorithm to solve the quasi-Wigner solution of the gap equation beyond chiral limit. Employing a Gaussian gluon model and rainbow truncation, we find that the quasi-Wigner solution exists in a limited region of current quark mass, $m<43.1$ MeV, at zero temperature $T$ and zero chemical potential $\mu$. The difference between Cornwall-Jackiw-Tomboulis (CJT) effective actions of quasi-Wigner and Nambu-Goldstone solutions shows that the Nambu-Goldstone solution is chosen by physics. Moreover, the quasi-Wigner solution is studied at finite temperature and chemical potential, the far infrared mass function of quasi-Wigner solution is negative and decrease along with $T$ at $\mu=0$. Its susceptibility is divergent at certain temperature with small $m$, and this temperature decreases along with $m$. Taking $T=80$ MeV as an example, the quasi-Wigner solution is shown at finite chemical potential upto $\mu=350$ MeV as well as Nambu solution, the coexistence of these two solutions indicates that the QCD system suffers the first order phase transition. The first order chiral phase transition line is determined by the difference of CJT effective actions.

Solutions and their evolutions of the quark gap equation are studied within the Nambu-Jona--Lasinio model, which is a basic issue for studying the QCD phase structure and locating the possible critical end point. It is shown that in the chiral limit case of the vacuum, chiral symmetry will hold if the coupling strength $G$ is small, then the system only has the Wigner solution at $M=0$. If increasing $G$, two symmetric minima will appear as the positive and `negative' Nambu solutions, however, the solution $M=0$ now corresponds to a maximum instead of a minimum of the thermodynamical potential, so is not a physically stable state anymore (we call it `pseudo-Wigner solution'). Besides, it is shown that as the current quark mass $m$ increases, the pseudo-Wigner solution will become negative, and disappear together with the negative Nambu solution if $m$ is large enough. Similar things happen if we increase the temperature or quark chemical potential $\mu$. Some interesting phenomenon is, from some $\mu$ a second local minimum will show up. As $\mu$ increases gradually, it will be stabler than the Nambu solution, survives even the Nambu solution disappears, and approaches $m$, which are just the features of the Wigner solution we expect., Comment: version accepted for publication in the European Physical Journal C

We study the cosmic ray antiprotons with updated constraints on the propagation, proton injection, and solar modulation parameters based on the newest AMS-02 data near the Earth and Voyager data in the local interstellar space, and on the cross section of antiproton production due to proton-proton collisions based on new collider data. We use a Bayesian approach to properly consider the uncertainties of the model predictions of both the background and the dark matter (DM) annihilation components of antiprotons. We find that including an extra component of antiprotons from the annihilation of DM particles into a pair of quarks can improve the fit to the AMS-02 antiproton data considerably. The favored mass of DM particles is about $60\sim100$ GeV, and the annihilation cross section is just at the level of the thermal production of DM ($\langle\sigma v\rangle \sim O(10^{-26})$ cm$^3$~s$^{-1}$)., Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures and 1 table; JCAP accepted version

In this paper, we aim to study the complete self-energy in the fermion propagator within two-flavor NJL model in the case of finite temperature, chemical potential and external magnetic field. Through Fierz transformation we prove that the self-energy is not simply proportional to dynamical mass in the presence of chemical potential, moreover, it contains four kinds of condensates after introducing external magnetic field. We find out the appropriate and complete form of self-energy and establish new gap equations. We take two of the four condensates (scalar and pseudovector condensates) to make an approximation and simplify the gap equations. The numerical results show that not only the dynamical mass get quantitative modification, but also the properties of Nambu phase and Wigner phase are significantly different with classic results. Instead of classic Wigner phase with zero dynamic mass in the massless NJL model, we propose a new phase - quasi-Wigner phase in this article, it has small but nonzero dynamic mass, with increasing chemical potential, eventually Nambu phase will turn into quasi-Wigner phase with first-order phase transition, therefore the chiral symmetry can never be fully restored but be partially restored. Furthermore, we prove that pseudovector condensate in self-energy can generate energy splitting in dispersion relation, it will cause minor differences of particle numbers with the split energy levels., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1601.06637