8 pages, 3 figures. Contribution to the proceedings of 13th International Conference on Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (NN2018) in Omiya, Japan. Plenary talk given by S. J. Brodsky. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1802.08552, arXiv:1709.01191, arXiv:1611.0719
The QCD light-front (LF) Hamiltonian equation H_{LF}|Ψ> = M^2 |Ψ> derived from quantization at fixed LF time τ= t+z/c provides a causal, frame-independent, method for computing hadron spectroscopy as well as dynamical observables such as structure functions, transverse momentum distributions, and distribution amplitudes. The LF formalism also leads to novel nuclear phenomena, such as "hidden color", "color transparency", "nuclear-bound quarkonium" and the shadowing and antishadowing of nuclear structure functions. For example, there are five distinct color-singlet Fock state representations of the six color-triplet quarks of the deuteron. The hidden color Fock states become manifest when the deuteron is probed when it has small transverse size, as in measurements of the deuteron form factor at large momentum transfer. The QCD Lagrangian with zero quark mass has no explicit mass scale. However, as shown by de Alfaro, Fubini, and Furlan (dAFF), a mass scale can appear in the equations of motion without affecting the conformal invariance of the Action. When one applies the dAFF procedure to the QCD LF Hamiltonian, it leads to a color confining potential κ^4 ζ^2 for mesons, where ζ^2 is the LF radial variable conjugate to the qbar-q invariant mass squared. The same result, including spin terms, is obtained using LF holography (AdS/QCD) -- the duality between LF dynamics and AdS_5 -- if one modifies the AdS_5 Action by the dilaton exp{+κ^2 z^2} in the fifth dimension z. If this procedure is generalized using superconformal algebra, the resulting LF eigensolutions provide unified Regge spectroscopy of mesons, baryons, and tetraquarks, including remarkable supersymmetric relations between the masses of mesons, baryons and tetraquarks with a universal Regge slope...
Using ideas from Light Front Holography, we discuss the calculation of hadronic properties. In this talk I will pay special attention to hadronic masses and the nucleon helicity-independent generalized parton distributions of quarks in the zero skewness case
This is the second paper on hadronic wave functions in the light front formulation. We first consider only confinement effects, using the classical Nambu-Gotto string with massive end points in the light cone gauge. We derive the light-front Hamiltonian and show how to solve it, using an expansion in suitable basis functions. We next discuss the correlators of Wilson lines on the light front, leading to an effective Hamiltonian that includes spin effects. At the end, we consider a separate problem of instanton-induced interactions, at the origin of the pion as a massless Goldstone mode on the …
The purpose of this review is to provide basic ingredients of holographic QCD to non-experts in string theory and to summarize its interesting achievements in nuclear and hadron physics. We focus on results from a less stringy bottom-up approach and review a stringy top-down model with some calculational details.
A relativistic light front formulation of nuclear dynamics is applied to infinite nuclear matter. A hadronic meson-baryon Lagrangian, consistent with chiral symmetry, leads to a nuclear eigenvalue problem which is solved, including nucleon-nucleon (NN) correlations, in the one-boson-exchange approximation for the NN potential. The nuclear matter saturation properties are reasonably well reproduced, with a compression modulus of 180 MeV. We find that there are about 0.05 excess pions per nucleon.
On the one hand any effective action of the QCD, $S[π,\,ρ,\,ω,\ldots,N,\,\overline N,\,Δ^{3/2},\ldots]$, would involve, at least in principle, a tower of hadronic fields of all spins; on the other hand the front form of the field theory has emerged as an appropriate framework to investigate the high energy behaviour of many systems. Motivated by these simple considerations we present a systematic formalism which explicitly provides the front form fields appropriate for constructing a $S[π,\,ρ,\,ω,\ldots,N,\,\overline N,\,Δ^{3/2},\ldots]$. Further, a transformation matrix $Ω(j)$ is constructed …
Light-Front Holography, a remarkable feature of the AdS/CFT correspondence, maps amplitudes in anti-de Sitter (AdS) space to frame-independent light-front wavefunctions of hadrons in physical space-time. The model leads to an effective confining light-front QCD Hamiltonian and a single-variable light-front Schrodinger equation which determines the eigenspectrum and the light-front wavefunctions of hadrons for general spin and orbital angular momentum. The coordinate z in AdS space is identified with a Lorentz-invariant coordinate zeta which measures the separation of the constituents within a …
Surfaces corresponding to the constant values of the light front variable forms paraboloids in the phase space of the inclusively produced hadrons in heavy-ion collisions. In this paper, it is demonstrated with the simulated Au-Au collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 200$ GeV using the UrQMD event generator that the paraboloidal surface defined by a certain constant value of the light front variable divides the particles in the phase space into two groups such that the distributions of the square of the transverse momentum, the polar angle and the light front variable of particles belonging to one among …
Light-front coordinates offer a scenario in which a constituent approximation of hadron structure can emerge from QCD. This requires cutoffs that violate Lorentz covariance and gauge invariance, and a new renormalization group formalism based on a similarity transformation is used with coupling coherence to fix counterterms that restore these symmetries. The counterterms contain functions of longitudinal momentum fractions which severely complicate renormalization, but they also offer possible resolutions of apparent contradictions between the constituent picture and QCD. The similarity transf…
A light-front treatment for spherical nuclei is developed from a relativistic effective Lagrangian and employing the mean field approximation. Minimizing the nuclear minus momentum subject to the constraint that, in the rest frame, the expectation values of the plus- and minus-momenta are the same leads to a formalism in which rotational invariance is recovered.
These are the proceedings of the symposium on ``Frontiers in Nuclear Physics'' held at the Physikzentrum Bad Honnef from June 18 to 20, 2009. The workshop concentrated on recent advances in the understanding of the nuclear forces, few-nucleon systems and related topics. Included are a short contribution per talk.
We find a correspondence between semiclassical QCD quantized on the light-front and a dual gravity model in anti--de Sitter (AdS) space, thus providing an initial approximation to QCD in its strongly coupled regime. This correspondence -- light-front holography -- leads to a light-front Hamiltonian and relativistic bound-state wave equations that are functions of an invariant impact variable $ζ$ which measures the separation of the quark and gluonic constituents within hadrons at equal light-front time. The eigenvalues of the resulting light-front Schrödinger and Dirac equations are consistent…
Light-front holography allows hadronic amplitudes in the AdS/QCD fifth dimension to be mapped to frame-independent light-front wavefunctions of hadrons in physical space-time, thus providing a relativistic description of hadrons at the amplitude level. The AdS coordinate z is identified with an invariant light-front coordinate zeta which separates the dynamics of quark and gluon binding from the kinematics of constituent spin and internal orbital angular momentum. The result is a single-variable light-front Schrodinger equation for QCD which determines the eigenspectrum and the light-front wav…
A remarkable consequence of the AdS/CFT correspondence is the nonperturbative derivation of dimensional counting rules for hard scattering processes. Using string/gauge duality we derive the QCD power behavior of light-front Fock-state hadronic wavefunctions for hard scattering in the large-$r$ region of the AdS space from the conformal isometries which determine the scaling of string states as we approach the boundary from the interior of AdS space. The nonperturbative scaling results are obtained for spin-zero and spin-$\half$ hadrons and are extended to include the orbital angular momentum …
In this paper, we develop a weak-coupling treatment of nonperturbative QCD to heavy hadrons on the light-front. First, we present a derivation of quark confining interaction in light-front QCD for heavy quark systems, based on the recently developed light-front similarity renormalization group approach and the light-front heavy quark effective theory. The resulting effective light-front QCD Hamiltonian $H_λ$ at a low-energy cutoff $λ$ manifests the coexistence of a confining potential and a Coulomb potential. A clear light-front picture of quark confinement emerges. Using this low energy QCD H…
We study the mass/energy structure of the bound state of hadrons in two-dimensional quantum chromodynamics in the large number of color limit (t' Hooft model). We analyze separately the contributions from the traceless and trace part of the energy-momentum tensor, and show that the masses are related to the matrix elements of the scalar charge and Coulomb energy. We derive the light-front sum rules for the scalar charge and Coulomb energy, expressed in terms of the light-front wave functions, and find that they are regular at $x=0$ without the delta function contribution. We also consider the …
Light front formalism for composite systems is presented. Derivation of equations for bound state and scattering problems are given. Methods of constructing of elastic form factors and scattering amplitudes of composite particles are reviewed. Elastic form factors in the impulse approximation are calculated. Scattering amplitudes for relativistic bound states are constructed. Some model cases for transition amplitudes are considered. Deep inelastic form factors (structure functions) are expressed through light front wave functions. It is shown that taking into account of transverse motion of p…
Current studies on heavy hadrons in nuclear medium are reviewed with a summary of the basic theoretical concepts of QCD, namely chiral symmetry, heavy quark spin symmetry, and the effective Lagrangian approach. The nuclear matter is an interesting place to study the properties of heavy hadrons from many different points of view. We emphasize the importance of the following topics: (i) charm/bottom hadron-nucleon interaction, (ii) structure of charm/bottom nuclei, and (iii) QCD vacuum properties and hadron modifications in nuclear medium. We pick up three different groups of heavy hadrons, quar…
Light-front holography is a remarkable feature of the AdS/CFT correspondence between gravity in AdS space and conformal field theories in physical space-time; it allows string modes $Φ(z)$ in the anti-de Sitter (AdS) fifth dimension to be precisely mapped to the light-front wavefunctions of hadrons in physical space-time in terms of a specific light-front impact variable $ζ$ which measures the separation of the quark and gluonic constituents within the hadron. This mapping was originally obtained by matching the exact expression for electromagnetic current matrix elements in AdS space with the…
One of the most fundamental problems in Quantum Chromodynamics is to understand the origin of the mass scale which controls the range of color confinement and the hadronic spectrum. We show that a mass gap and a fundamental color confinement scale arise when one extends the formalism of de Alfaro, Fubini and Furlan to frame-independent light-front Hamiltonian theory. Remarkably, the resulting light-front potential has a unique form of a harmonic oscillator in the light-front invariant impact variable if one requires that the action remains conformally invariant. The result is a single-variable…
A light front treatment of the nuclear wave function is developed and applied, using the mean field approximation, to infinite nuclear matter. The nuclear mesons are shown to carry about a third of the nuclear plus momentum, p+; but their momentum distribution has support only at p+ =0, and the mesons do not contribute to nuclear deep inelastic scattering. This zero mode effect occurs because the meson fields are independent of space-time position.
This work is a continuation in our series of papers, that addresses quark models of hadronic structure on the light front, motivated by the QCD vacuum structure and lattice results. In this paper we focus on the importance of diquark correlations, which we describe by a quasi-local four-fermion effective 't Hooft interaction induced by instantons. The same interaction is also shown to generate extra quark-antiquark pair of the "sea". Its higher order iteration can be included via "pion-mediation": both taken together yield a quantitative description of the observed flavor asymmetry of antiquar…
This work is a continuation in our series of papers, that addresses quark models of hadronic structure on the light front. The chief focus of this paper is the quantum-mechanical solution of the three-quark model Hamiltonian, describing baryons. In Jacobi coordinates, we use a harmonic oscillator basis for the transverse directions. For the longitudinal momentum fractions $x_i$, the pertinent basis follows from quantum mechanics in a "triangular cup" potential, which we solve exactly. We calculate the masses and light front wave functions for the flavor symmetric $\frac 32^+$ baryons $bbb,ccc,…
I survey recent developments in hadron physics which follow from the application of superconformal quantum mechanics and light-front holography. This includes new insights into the physics of color confinement, chiral symmetry, the spectroscopy and dynamics of hadrons, as well as surprising supersymmetric relations between the masses of mesons, baryons, and tetraquarks. I also will discuss some novel features of QCD -- such as color transparency, hidden color, and asymmetric intrinsic heavy-quark phenomena. The elimination of renormalization scale ambiguities and the modification of QCD sum ru…
We describe a procedure to extend the light-front holographic approach to hadronic physics to include light-quark masses. The proposed framework allows us to extend the formalism of de Alfaro, Fubini and Furlan to the frame-independent light-front Hamiltonian theory in the approximation where the dynamics in the invariant transverse variable is unchanged to first order in the quark masses. The confinement potential follows from an effective theory which encodes the fundamental conformality of the classical QCD Lagrangian and leads to a semiclassical relativistic light-front wave equation for a…
We give an overview of recent progress into the infrared structure of QCD based on the gauge/gravity correspondence and light-front quantization, where the color confining interaction for mesons and baryons is determined by an underlying superconformal algebraic structure. This new approach to hadron physics gives remarkable connections and predictions across the entire mass spectrum of hadrons and also describes the infrared behavior of the strong coupling. More recently, an extensive study of form factors, polarized and unpolarized parton distributions and the sea quark contribution to the n…
We show how the string amplitude $Φ(z)$ defined on the fifth dimension in AdS$_5$ space can be precisely mapped to the light-front wavefunctions of hadrons in physical spacetime. We find an exact correspondence between the holographic variable $z$ and an impact variable $ζ$, which represents the measure of transverse separation of the constituents within the hadrons. In addition, we derive effective four dimensional Schrödinger equations for the bound states of massless quarks and gluons which exactly reproduce the AdS/CFT results and give a realistic description of the light-quark meson and b…
It may be possible to derive a constituent approximation for bound states in QCD using hamiltonian light-front field theory. Cutoffs that violate explicit gauge invariance and Lorentz covariance must be employed. A similarity renormalization group and coupling coherence are used to compute the effective hamiltonian as an expansion in powers of the canonical QCD running coupling constant. At second order the QCD hamiltonian contains a confining interaction, which is being studied using bound state perturbation theory. Explicit constituent masses appear because of symmetry violations, and confin…
A relativistic light front formulation of nuclear dynamics is developed and applied to treating infinite nuclear matter in a method which includes the correlations of pairs of nucleons: this is light front Brueckner theory. We start with a hadronic meson-baryon Lagrangian that is consistent with chiral symmetry. This is used to obtain a light front version of a one-boson-exchange nucleon-nucleon potential (OBEP). The accuracy of our description of the nucleon-nucleon (NN) data is good, and similar to that of other relativistic OBEP models. We derive, within the light front formalism, the Hartr…
In this work, we find the light front densities for momentum and forces, including pressure and shear forces, within hadrons. This is achieved by deriving relativistically correct expressions relating these densities to the gravitational form factors $A(t)$ and $D(t)$ associated with the energy momentum tensor. The derivation begins from the fundamental definition of density in a quantum field theory, namely the expectation value of a local operator within a spatially-localized state. We find that it is necessary to use the light front formalism to define a density that corresponds to internal…
We argue that in the measured $p_T$ domain of RHIC, collisional rather than the radiative energy loss is the dominant mechanism for jet quenching. Accordingly we calculate nuclear suppression factor for light hadrons by taking only the elastic energy loss in sharp contrast with the previous calculations where only the radiative loss are considered.
We propose a six-dimensional light-front Wigner distribution for the complete description of partonic structures of a hadron such as pion and proton, taking advantage of the recently proposed light-front variable $\tilde{z}$ by Miller and Brodsky. Quantities derived from the Wigner distribution contain the most general information of partonic structures, including also new quantities correlating longitudinal coordinate with transverse momenta or transverse coordinates, together with spins. The new Wigner distribution can be viewed as a relativistic version of the original Wigner distribution i…
AdS/QCD, the correspondence between theories in a dilaton-modified five-dimensional anti-de Sitter space and confining field theories in physical space-time, provides a remarkable semiclassical model for hadron physics. Light-front holography allows hadronic amplitudes in the AdS fifth dimension to be mapped to frame-independent light-front wavefunctions of hadrons in physical space-time. The result is a single-variable light-front Schrodinger equation which determines the eigenspectrum and the light-front wavefunctions of hadrons for general spin and orbital angular momentum. The coordinate z…
A light front treatment of the nuclear wave function is developed and applied, using the mean field approximation, to infinite nuclear matter. The nuclear mesons are shown to carry about a third of the nuclear plus momentum; but their momentum distribution has support only at for vanishingly small values of the plus momentum, so the mesons do not contribute to nuclear deep inelastic scattering. This zero mode effect occurs because the meson fields are independent of space-time position.
Since large $p_T$ particles in high-energy hadronic or nuclear collisions come from jet fragmentation, jet quenching due to parton energy loss in dense matter will cause the suppression of large $p_T$ hadron spectra in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. Assuming an effective energy loss $dE/dx$ for the high $E_T$ partons, effective jet fragmentation functions are constructed in which leading hadrons will be suppressed. Using such effective fragmentation functions, high $p_T$ hadron spectra and particle suppression factors relative to $pp$ collisions are estimated in central high-energy nuclear …
We extend our analysis of the implications of hadronic supersymmetry for heavy-light hadrons in light-front holographic QCD. Although conformal symmetry is strongly broken by the heavy quark mass, supersymmetry and the holographic embedding of semiclassical light-front dynamics derived from five-dimensional anti-de Sitter (AdS) space nevertheless determines the form of the confining potential in the light-front Hamiltonian to be harmonic. The resulting light-front bound-state equations lead to a heavy-light Regge-like spectrum for both mesons and baryons. The confinement hadron mass scale and …
The problem of understanding the nuclear effects observed in lepton-nucleus deep-inelastic-scattering (the EMC effect) is still with us. Standard nuclear models (those using only hadronic degrees of freedom) are not able to account for the EMC effect. Thus it is necessary to understand how the nuclear medium modifies quark wave functions in the nucleus. Possibilities for such modifications, represented by the quark meson coupling model, and the suppression of point-like-configurations are discussed, and methods to experimentally choose between these are reviewed.
In this talk I first discuss predictions based on QCD sum rules and on hadronic models for the properties of vector mesons in the nuclear medium. I then describe possible experimental signatures and show detailed predictions for dilepton invariant mass spectra with a special emphasis on nuclear reactions involving elementary incoming beams and nuclear targets. I will in particular illustrate that the sensitivity of pion and photon induced reactions to in-medium effects is nearly as large as that of heavy-ion reactions.
In this talk I first discuss predictions based on QCD sum rules and on hadronic models for the properties of vector mesons in the nuclear medium. I then describe possible experimental signatures and show detailed predictions for dilepton invariant mass spectra with a special emphasis on nuclear reactions involving elementary incoming beams and nuclear targets. I will in particular illustrate that the sensitivity of pion and photon induced reactions to in-medium effects is comparable to that of heavy-ion reactions.
An outstanding goal of physics is to find solutions that describe hadrons in the theory of strong interactions, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). For this goal, the light-front Hamiltonian formulation of QCD (LFQCD) is a complementary approach to the well-established lattice gauge method. LFQCD offers access to the hadrons' nonperturbative quark and gluon amplitudes, which are directly testable in experiments at existing and future facilities. We present an overview of the promises and challenges of LFQCD in the context of unsolved issues in QCD that require broadened and accelerated investigation…
In hadron-nucleus interactions, the stronger is nuclear shadowing in the total cross section the higher is the multiplicity of secondary hadrons. In deep inelastic scattering, nuclear shadowing at small $x$ is associated with the hadronlike behaviour of photons as contrasted to the pointlike behaviour in the non-shadowing region of large $x$. In this paper we predict smaller mean multiplicity of secondary hadrons, and weaker fragmentation of the target nucleus, in deep inelastic leptoptoproduction on nuclei in the shadowing region of small $x$ as compared to the non-shadowing region of large $…
The holographic mapping of gravity in AdS space to QCD, quantized at fixed light-front time, provides a precise relation between the bound-state amplitudes in the fifth dimension of AdS space and the boost-invariant light-front wavefunctions describing the internal structure of hadrons in physical space-time. In particular, the elastic and transition form factors of the pion and the nucleons are well described in this framework. The light-front AdS/QCD holographic approach thus gives a frame-independent first approximation of the color-confining dynamics, spectroscopy, and excitation spectra o…
We examine whether it is possible to simultaneously describe the experimental data from RHIC and LHC on nuclear suppression of light hadrons and non-photonic single electrons in the pQCD picture of parton energy loss. We perform calculations accounting for both radiative and collisional energy loss. We show that once the coupling constant is fixed from comparison with data on the nuclear modification factor for light hadrons it gives a satisfactory agreement with data on the electron R_{AA} and azimuthal anisotropy v_2. Our results show that the collisional mechanism is only of marginal signif…
We study the light-front covariance of a vector-meson decay constant using a manifestly covariant fermion field theory model in $(3+1)$ dimensions. The light-front zero-mode issues are analyzed in terms of polarization vectors and method of identifying the zero-mode operator and of obtaining the light-front covariant decay constant is discussed.
The QCD light-front Hamitonian equation derived from quantization at fixed LF time provides a causal, frame-independent, method for computing hadron spectroscopy and dynamical observables. de Alfaro, Fubini, and Furlan (dAFF) have made an important observation that a mass scale can appear in the equations of motion without affecting the conformal invariance of the action if one adds a term to the Hamiltonian proportional to the dilatation operator or the special conformal operator. If one applies the dAFF procedure to the QCD light-front Hamiltonian, it leads to a color confining potential $κ^…
AdS/QCD, the correspondence between theories in a modified five-dimensional anti-de Sitter space and confining field theories in physical space-time, provides a remarkable semiclassical model for hadron physics. Light-front holography allows hadronic amplitudes in the AdS fifth dimension to be mapped to frame-independent light-front wavefunctions of hadrons in physical space-time, thus providing a relativistic description of hadrons at the amplitude level. We identify the AdS coordinate $z$ with an invariant light-front coordinate $ζ$ which separates the dynamics of quark and gluon binding fro…
We explore how nuclear modifications to the nucleon parton distributions affect production of high-$p_T$ hadrons in heavy ion collisions. We perform a leading order calculation of the high-$p_T$ charged pion, kaon and proton spectra using standard fragmentation functions and shadowing parameterizations. We also consider alternate models of shadowing. Near midrapidity, shadowing is a small effect and cannot explain the large observed suppression of high-$p_T$ hadrons. We also consider the isospin difference between protons and nuclei and find that it is also a small effect on high-$p_T$ hadron …
I propose a scaling analysis of the hadron multiplicity ratio measured in Deep Inelastic Scattering on nuclear targets as a tool to distinguish energy loss and nuclear absorption effects on hadron suppression in cold nuclear matter. The proposed scaling variable is a function of the hadron fractional energy and of the virtual photon energy. Its functional form, which depends on a parameter λ, can be fixed by general theoretical considerations and encompasses both energy loss and absorption models. The parameter λis fitted to HERMES experimental data and shown to favor prehadron nuclear absorpt…
I examine the role of final state interactions in cold nuclear matter in modifying hadron production on nuclear targets with leptonic or hadronic beams. I demonstrate the extent to which available experimental data in electron-nucleus collisions can give direct information on final state effects in hadron-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions. For hadron-nucleus collisions, a theoretical estimate based on a parton energy loss model tested in lepton-nucleus collisions shows a large effect on mid-rapidity hadrons at fixed target experiments. At RHIC energy, the effect is large for negative rapi…
The correspondence between theories in anti-de Sitter space and conformal field theories in physical space-time leads to an analytic, semiclassical model for strongly-coupled QCD. Light-front holography allows hadronic amplitudes in the AdS fifth dimension to be mapped to frame-independent light-front wavefunctions of hadrons in physical space-time, thus providing a relativistic description of hadrons at the amplitude level. We identify the AdS coordinate $z$ with an invariant light-front coordinate $ζ$ which separates the dynamics of quark and gluon binding from the kinematics of constituent …
We discuss some remarkable features of the light-front holographic mapping of classical gravity in anti-de Sitter space modified by a confining dilaton background. In particular, we show that a positive-sign dilaton solution $\exp(+κ^2 z^2)$ has better chances to describe the correct hadronic phenomenology than the negative solution $\exp{(- κ^2 z^2)}$ extensively studied in the literature. We also show that the use of twist-scaling dimensions, instead of canonical dimensions, is required to give a good description of the spectrum and form factors of hadrons. Another key element is the explici…
We examine the effects of color screening on the transition of a parton plasma into a hadron gas at RHIC energies. It is found that as expected, color screening posed itself as a significant barrier for hadronization. Parton-hadron conversion would therefore be delayed and prolonged when compared to that occuring in a vacuum. Due to the on-going expansion, the resulting hadron densities are lowered. Parton equilibration is also shown to be seriously disrupted in the process.
Radiative energy loss of a highly virtual quark originating from a deep-inelastic electron scattering plays a crucial role in production of leading hadrons off nuclei. The density of energy loss for gluon radiation turns out to be time- and energy--dependent in inclusive hadron production. Important phenomena involved are Sudakov's suppression of no radiation of that part of gluon spectrum, which is forbidden by energy conservation, and color transparency, which suppresses the final state interaction of the produced colorless wave packet. We model the soft part of hadronization, which usually …
The experimental results on the pion, strangeness and J/psi production in high energy nuclear collisions are discussed. The anomalous energy dependence of pion and strangeness production is consistent with the hypothesis that a transition to a deconfined phase takes place between the top AGS (15 AGeV) and the SPS (200 AGeV) energies. The J/psi production systematics at the SPS can be understood assuming that the J/psi mesons are created at hadronization according to the available hadronic phase space. This new interpretation of the J/psi data allows one to establish a coherent picture of high …
Gauge/gravity duality leads to a simple, analytical, and phenomenologically compelling nonperturbative approximation to the full light-front QCD Hamiltonian. This approach, called "Light-Front Holography", successfully describes the spectroscopy of light-quark meson and baryons, their elastic and transition form factors, and other hadronic properties. The bound-state Schrodinger and Dirac equations of the soft-wall AdS/QCD model predict linear Regge trajectories which have the same slope in orbital angular momentum L and radial quantum number n for both mesons and baryons. Light-front holograp…
An approach for describing the electromagnetic form factors of hadrons, in the space- and time-like regions, within a constituent quark model on the light front is shortly illustrated and calculations for the pion case are reported. Three main ingredients enter our approach: i) the dressed photon vertex where a photon decays in a quark-antiquark pair, ii) the on-shell quark-hadron vertex functions in the valence sector, and iii) the non-valence component of the hadron state.
One of the most important nonperturbative methods for solving QCD is quantization at fixed light-front time, τ= t+z/c -- Dirac's "Front Form". The eigenvalues of the light-front QCD Hamiltonian predict the hadron spectrum and the eigensolutions provide the light-front wavefunctions which describe hadron structure. More generally, we show that the valence Fock-state wavefunctions of the light-front QCD Hamiltonian satisfy a single-variable relativistic equation of motion, analogous to the nonrelativistic radial Schrödinger equation, with an effective confining potential U which systematically i…
We show that the nonperturbative light-front dynamics of relativistic hadronic bound states has a dual semiclassical gravity description on a higher dimensional warped AdS space in the limit of zero quark masses. This mapping of AdS gravity theory to the boundary quantum field theory, quantized at fixed light-front time, allows one to establish a precise relation between holographic wave functions in AdS space and the light-front wavefunctions describing the internal structure of hadrons. The resulting AdS/QCD model gives a remarkably good accounting of the spectrum, elastic and transition for…
