16154793
A Brief history of the stringy instanton
The arcane ADHM construction of Yang-Mills instantons can be very naturally understood in the framework of D-brane dynamics in string theory. In this point-of-view, the mysterious auxiliary symmetry of the ADHM construction arises as a gauge symmetry and the instantons are modified at short distances where string effects become important. By decoupling the stringy effects, one can recover all the instanton formalism, including the all-important volume form on the instanton moduli space. We describe applications of the instanton calculus to the AdS/CFT correspondence and higher derivative terms in the D3-brane effective action. In these applications, there is an interesting relation between instanton partition functions, the Euler characteristic of instanton moduli space and modular symmetry. We also describe how it is now possible to do multi-instanton calculations in gauge theory and we resolve an old puzzle involving the gluino condensate in supersymmetric QCD.
34905319
Minkowski space non-Abelian classical solutions with noninteger winding number change.
Working in a spherically symmetric ansatz in Minkowski space, we discover new solutions to the classical equations of motion of pure SU(2) gauge theory. These solutions represent spherical shells of energy, which move inward near the speed of light at early times, excite the region of space around the origin at intermediate times, and move outward at late times. The solutions change the winding number in bounded regions centered at the origin by noninteger amounts. They also produce a noninteger topological charge in these regions. We show that the previously discovered solutions of Luescher and Schechter also have these properties.
119379193
The calculus of many instantons
We describe the modern formalism, ideas and applications of the instanton calculus for gauge theories with, and without, supersymmetry. Particular emphasis is put on developing a formalism that can deal with any number of instantons. This necessitates a thorough review of the ADHM construction of instantons with arbitrary charge and an in-depth analysis of the resulting moduli space of solutions. We review the construction of the ADHM moduli space as a hyper-Kahler quotient. We show how the functional integral in the semi-classical approximation reduces to an integral over the instanton moduli space in each instanton sector and how the resulting matrix partition function involves various geometrical quantities on the instanton moduli space: volume form, connection, curvature, isometries, etc. One important conclusion is that this partition function is the dimensional reduction of a higher- dimensional gauged linear sigma model which naturally leads us to describe the relation of the instanton calculus to D-branes in string theory. Along the way we describe powerful applications of the calculus of many instantons to supersymmetric gauge theories including (i) the gluino condensate puzzle in N = 1 theories (ii) Seiberg-Witten theory in N = 2 theories; and (iii) the AdS/CFT correspondence in N = 2 and N = 4 theories. Finally, we brielfy review the modifications of the instanton calculus for a gauge theory defined on a non-commutative spacetime and we also describe a new method for calculating instanton processes using a form of localization on the instanton moduli space.
14575937
The Instanton Hunter's guide to supersymmetric SU(N) gauge theories
Abstract We present a compendium of results for ADHM multi-instantons in SU ( N ) SUSY gauge theories, followed by applications to N = 2 supersymmetric models. Extending recent SU (2) work, and treating the N = 1 and N = 2 cases in parallel, we construct: (i) the ADHM supermultiplet, (ii) the multi-instanton action, and (iii) the collective coordinate integration measure. Specializing to N = 2, we then give a closed formula for F k , the k -instanton contribution to the prepotential, as a finite-dimensional collective coordinate integral. This amounts to a weak-coupling solution, in quadratures, of the low-energy dynamics of N = 2 SQCD, without appeal to duality. As an application, we calculate F 1 for all SU ( N ) and any number of flavors N F ; for N F N − 2 and N F = 2 N − 1 we confirm previous instanton calculations and agree with the proposed hyper-elliptic curve solutions. For N F = 2 N − 2 and N F = 2 N with N > 3 we obtain new results, which in the latter case we do not understand how to reconcile with the curves.
119236962
Travels on the squark-gluino mass plane
Institut fur Theoretische Physik, Universitat Heidelberg, Germany(Dated: September 12, 2011)Soft supersymmetry breaking appears in the weak-scale e ective action but is usually generated athigher scales. For these models the structure of the renormalization group evolution down to theelectroweak scale leaves only part of the squark-gluino and slepton-gaugino mass planes accessible.Our observations divide these physical mass planes into three wedges: the rst can be reached byall models of high-scale breaking; the second can only be populated by models with a low mediationscale; in the third wedge squarks and gluinos would have to be described by an exotic theory. Allusual benchmark points reside in the rst wedge, even though an LHC discovery in the third wedge
119447895
Multi-gluon collinear limits from MHV diagrams
We consider the multi-collinear limit of multi-gluon QCD amplitudes at tree level. We use the MHV rules for constructing colour ordered tree amplitudes and the general collinear factorization formula to derive timelike splitting functions that are valid for specific numbers of negative helicity gluons and an arbitrary number of positive helicity gluons (or vice versa). As an example we present new results describing the collinear limits of up to six gluons.
17632705
Forward Physics at the LHC
We review two inter-related topics. First, we consider the behaviour of "soft" scattering observables, such as sigma_{tot}, dsigma_{el}/dt, dsigma_{SD}/dtdM^2, particle multiplicities etc., at high-energy proton-(anti)proton colliders. We emphasize the sizeable effects of absorption on high-energy `soft' processes, and, hence, the necessity to include multi-Pomeron-Pomeron interactions in the usual multi-channel eikonal description. We describe a multi-component model which has been tuned to the available data for soft processes in the CERN-ISR to Tevatron energy range, and which therefore allows predictions to be made for `soft' observables at the LHC. The second topic concerns the calculation of the rate of exclusive processes of the form pp --> p+A+p at high energy colliders, where A is a heavy system. In particular, we discuss the survival probability of the rapidity gaps (denoted by the + signs) to both eikonal and enhanced soft rescattering effects. At the LHC energy, the most topical case is when A is a Higgs boson. At the Tevatron, measurements have been made for the exclusive diffractive production of various systems: A being either gamma-gamma, dijet, or a chi_c meson. We compare the observed rates with the expectations. Finally, we describe how predictions for exclusive processes may be checked in the early runs of the LHC.
605783
Double-diffractive processes in high-resolution missing-mass experiments at the Tevatron
Abstract. We evaluate, in a model-independent way, the signal-to-background ratio for Higgs$\rightarrow b\bar{b}$ detection in exclusive double-diffractive events at the Tevatron and the LHC. For the missing-mass approach to be able to identify the Higgs boson, it will be necessary to use a central jet detector and to tag b quark jets. The signal is predicted to be very small at the Tevatron, but observable at the LHC. However we note that the background, that is double-diffractive dijet production, may serve as a unique gluon factory. We also give estimates for the double-diffractive production of $\chi_c$ and $\chi_b$ mesons at the Tevatron. We emphasize that a high-resolution missing-mass measurement, on its own, is insufficient to identify rare processes.
17513856
NON-FACTORIZABLE CORRECTIONS AND EFFECTIVE FIELD THEORIES
Abstract We analyze the structure of higher-order radiative corrections for processes with unstable particles. In particular, we study a model with an unstable, scalar boson decaying into fermions that are subject to gauge interactions. We neglect effects from real radiation. By subsequently integrating out the various scales that are induced by the presence of unstable particles we obtain a hierarchy of effective field theories. In the effective field theory framework the separation of physically different effects is achieved naturally. In particular, we automatically obtain a separation of factorizable and non-factorizable corrections to all orders in perturbation theory. At one loop this treatment is equivalent to the double-pole approximation (DPA). It is known that one-loop non-factorizable corrections to invariant mass distributions are suppressed at high energy. We study the mechanism of this suppression and obtain estimates of higher-order non-factorizable corrections at high energy.
123672226
THE STRING EFFECT AND QCD COHERENCE
Abstract In the framework of the idea of local parton-hadron duality we discuss the asymptotic predictions of QCD perturbation theory for angular distributions of hadron flows in three-jet events, e + e - → q q g → hadrons. The coherence of soft gluon emission provides the QCD explanation of the string effect observed in experiments.
123452544
Polarization effects in the reaction gamma gamma ---> e+ e- and possibilities of its experimental study