An 't Hooft anomaly at general imaginary baryon chemical potential constrains the QCD chiral transition to three minimal CFT scenarios, with the favored one for N_f >= 3 featuring a conformal manifold of theta_B-dependent universality classes with an exactly marginal operator tied to baryon density.
Anomaly matching in QCD thermal phase transition
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abstract
We study an 't Hooft anomaly of massless QCD at finite temperature. With the imaginary baryon chemical potential at the Roberge-Weiss point, there is a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry which can be used to define confinement. We show the existence of a mixed anomaly between the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry and the chiral symmetry, which gives a strong relation between confinement and chiral symmetry breaking. The anomaly is a parity anomaly in the QCD Lagrangian reduced to three dimensions. It is reproduced in the chiral Lagrangian by a topological term related to Skyrmion charge, matching the anomaly before and after QCD phase transition. The effect of the imaginary chemical potential is suppresssed in the large $N$ expansion, and we discuss implications of the 't~Hooft anomaly matching for the nature of QCD phase transition with and without the imaginary chemical potential. Arguments based on universality alone are disfavored, and a first order phase transition may be the simplest possibility if the large $N$ expansion is qualitatively good.
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Does hot QCD have a conformal manifold in the chiral limit?
An 't Hooft anomaly at general imaginary baryon chemical potential constrains the QCD chiral transition to three minimal CFT scenarios, with the favored one for N_f >= 3 featuring a conformal manifold of theta_B-dependent universality classes with an exactly marginal operator tied to baryon density.
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Adiabatic continuity in a partially reduced twisted Eguchi-Kawai model with one adjoint Dirac fermion
Simulations of a partially reduced twisted Eguchi-Kawai model with one adjoint Dirac fermion show the Polyakov loop remains near zero for periodic boundary conditions as the compactified circle shrinks, supporting adiabatic continuity of the confined phase.
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Anomalies in family unification models from bordism classification
Family unification models from E7 cosets have no global sigma model anomalies because the torsion parts of their bordism groups vanish, as computed via the Atiyah-Hirzebruch spectral sequence, including when isotropy subgroups are gauged.