{"paper":{"title":"Non-Hermitian Structure and Exceptional Points in Yang-Mills Theory from Analytic Continuation of Nc","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"hep-th","authors_text":"Gang Yang, Ke Ren, Qingjun Jin, Rui Yu","submitted_at":"2026-03-19T15:12:14Z","abstract_excerpt":"We show that analytic continuation of the number of colors, Nc, naturally endows Yang-Mills theory with a non-Hermitian structure. By examining the spectrum of the dilatation operator as a function of complex Nc, we identify a network of Exceptional Points (EPs) -- non-Hermitian degeneracies where anomalous dimensions degenerate and operator eigenstates coalesce. We demonstrate that these EPs act as topological defects in complex Nc-space, generating non-Abelian geometric phases and enforcing nontrivial monodromies among gauge-invariant operators. Moreover, we establish a correspondence betwee"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2603.19006","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2603.19006/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}