Quark flavors in hot and dense holographic QCD: setup and comparison to data
Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics（亚太理论物理中心）；Department of Physics, Pohang University of Science and Technology（浦项科技大学物理系）；Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院理论物理研究所）；Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Heidelberg（海德堡大学理论物理研究所）
Matti Jarvinen, Toshali Mitra
备注：
48 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables
发表信息：
Quark flavors in hot and dense holographic QCD: setup and comparison to data. J. High Energ. Phys. 2026, 210 (2026)
We establish a flavor dependent holographic framework for hot and dense QCD. To this end, we generalize a class of bottom-up holographic models for QCD in the Veneziano limit (V-QCD) by incorporating explicit flavor dependence. Specifically, we develop a $2+1$ flavor model characterized by two massless light quarks and a massive strange quark. Including the non-zero quark mass modifies the tachyon dependence of the model action, which yields a good agreement with the lattice data for thermodynamics in QCD in the low baryon number density and high temperature limit. We compare the model with various hadron resonance gas models at low temperature. We also compute the equation of state (EOS) at high density and low temperatures and find a smooth matching of this EOS with the nuclear matter EOS, suggesting significantly lower latent heat of the nuclear to quark matter transition than in earlier version of the V-QCD model. We observe that the smooth matching with the nuclear theory EOS is only applicable to a subset of potentials; furthermore, constraining the predictions of the model by limiting the potential parameters. We also identify the relevant fixed points of the model, particularly AdS$_2$ and AdS$_5$ fixed points.
We present an analysis of the three-flavor holographic model of QCD associated to a $D4/D8$ brane configuration, with symmetry breaking induced by a worldsheet instanton associated to a closed loop connecting $D4-D8-D6-\overline{D8}$. We calculate the electromagnetic and axial couplings of all octet and decuplet baryons, as well as several negative parity excitations, with and without symmetry breaking effects, and demonstrate qualitative and quantitative agreement with many available experimental measurements, with marked improvement over the analogous two-flavor models.
We construct the gravitational solution of the Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto model by introducing a magnetic field on the flavor brane. With taking into account their backreaction, we re-solve the type IIA supergravity in the presence of the magnetic field. Our calculation shows the gravitational solutions are magnetic-dependent and analytic both in the bubble (confined) and black brane (deconfined) case. We study the dual field theory at the leading order in the ratio of the number of flavors and colors, also in the Veneziano limit. Some physical properties related to the hadronic physics in an exter…
We introduce the strange quark mass to the Sakai-Sugimoto model of holographic QCD. We compute mass shifts in the spectra of three-flavor baryons at the leading order in perturbation in quark masses. Comparison with experimental data shows an agreement only qualitatively.
We study the effects of flavor symmetry breaking on holographic dense matter and compact stars in the D4/D6 model. To this end, two light flavors and one intermediate mass flavor are considered. For two light quarks, we investigate how the strong isospin violation affects the properties of holographic dense matter and compact stars. We observe that quark-antiquark condensates are flavor dependent and show interesting behavior near the transition from dense matter with only one flavor to matter with two flavors. An intermediate mass quark is introduced to investigate the role of the third flavo…
We study dynamical baryons in the holographic QCD model of Sakai and Sugimoto in the case of three flavors and with special interest in the construction of the Chern-Simons (CS) term. The baryon classical solution in this model is given by the BPST instanton, and we carry out the collective coordinate quantization of the solution. The CS term should give rise to a first class constraint which selects baryon states with right spins. However, the original CS term written in terms of the CS 5-form does not work. We instead propose a new CS term which is gauge invariant and is given as an integral…
We demonstrate a holographic realization of color-flavor locking phase, using N=4 SU(Nc) SYM coupled to N=2 Nf fundamental hypermultiplets as an example. The gravity dual consists of Nc D3-branes and Nf D7-branes with world volume gauge field representing the baryon density. Treating a small number \tilde{N}c << Nc of D3-branes as Yang-Mills instantons on the D7-branes, we consider possible potential(s) on their moduli space or equivalently the Higgs branch. We show that a non-trivial potential can be generated by including the backreaction of the baryonic density on the D7-branes, this dynami…
Holography provides a novel method to study the physics of Quark Gluon Plasmas, complementary to the ordinary field theory and lattice approaches. In this context, we analyze the informations that can be obtained for strongly coupled Plasmas containing dynamical flavors, also in the presence of a finite baryon chemical potential. In particular, we discuss the jet quenching and the hydrodynamic transport coefficients.
Gravity solutions describing the Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto model of holographic QCD with dynamical flavors are presented. The field theory is studied in the Veneziano limit, at first order in the ratio of the number of flavors and colors. The gravity solutions are analytic and dual to the field theory either in the confined, low temperature phase or in the deconfined, high temperature phase with small baryonic charge density. The phase diagram and the flavor contributions to vacuum (e.g. string tension and hadron masses) and thermodynamical properties of the dual field theory are then deduced. The…
We review the construction of gravitational solutions holographically dual to N=1 quiver gauge theories with dynamical flavor multiplets. We focus on the D3-D7 construction and consider the finite temperature, finite quark chemical potential case where there is a charged black hole in the dual solution. Discussed physical outputs of the model include its thermodynamics (with susceptibilities) and general hydrodynamic properties.
We study the dependence of the chiral condensate on external magnetic field in the context of holographic QCD at large number of flavors. We consider a holographic QCD model where the flavor degrees of freedom fully backreact on the color dynamics. Perturbative QCD calculations have shown that $B$ acts constructively on the chiral condensate, a phenomenon called "magnetic catalysis". In contrast, recent lattice calculations show that, depending on the number of flavors and temperature, the magnetic field may also act destructively, which is called "inverse magnetic catalysis". Here we show tha…
Recent progress in constructing holographic models for QCD is discussed, concentrating on the bottom-up models which implement holographically the renormalization group flow of QCD. The dynamics of gluons can be modeled by using a string-inspired model termed improved holographic QCD, and flavor can be added by introducing space filling branes in this model. The flavor fully backreacts to the glue in the Veneziano limit, giving rise to a class of models which are called V-QCD. The phase diagrams and spectra of V-QCD are in good agreement with results for QCD obtained by other methods.
We study baryons in holographic QCD corresponding to 1+1 dimensional single-flavor ($N_f$=1) QCD for the first time. We formulate 1+1 QCD using an $S^1$-compactified D2/D8/$\overline{\rm D8}$ branes in the superstring theory, and describe the baryon as a topological configuration in 1+1 $N_f$=1 QCD, corresponding to $Π_1({\rm U(1)})={\bf Z}$. Unlike 1+3 QCD with $N_f \ge 2$, however, we find that the low-dimensional baryonic soliton is generally unstable against a scale transformation/variation and swells infinitely in 1+1 $N_f$=1 QCD at the leading of large $N_c$. We thus point out a serious …
We extend the two-flavor hard-wall holographic model of Erlich, Katz, Son and Stephanov [Phys.\ Rev.\ Lett.\ {\bf 95}, 261602 (2005)] to four flavors to incorporate strange and charm quarks. The model incorporates chiral and flavor symmetry breaking and provides a reasonable description of masses and weak decay constants of a variety of scalar, pseudoscalar, vector and axial-vector strange and charmed mesons. In particular, we examine flavor symmetry breaking in the strong couplings of the $ρ$ meson to the charmed $D$ and $D^{*}$ mesons. We also compute electromagnetic form factors of the $π$,…
We revisit confinement/deconfinement transition in holographic QCD to consider the back-reaction of a bulk scalar field. The bulk scalar field is dual to a quark bi-linear operator $\bar qq$, and it encodes explicit and spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking of QCD. To perform the Hawking-Page transition analysis with the back-reaction, we first obtain a deformed AdS black hole solution due to a finite quark mass. Through the Hawking-Page analysis with the back-reacted geometry, we study the flavor number $N_f$ and finite quark mass dependence of the critical temperature of the QCD confinement/d…
In this work I explore theoretical and phenomenological implications of chemical potentials and charge densities inside a strongly coupled thermal plasma, using the gauge/gravity correspondence. Strong coupling effects discovered in this model theory are interpreted geometrically and may be taken as qualitative predictions for heavy ion collisions at RHIC and LHC. In particular I examine the thermodynamics, spectral functions, transport coefficients and the phase diagram of the strongly coupled plasma. For example stable mesons, which are the analogs of the QCD Rho-mesons, are found to survive…
We consider a bottom-up holographic model of QCD at finite temperature T and magnetic field B, and study dependence of thermodynamics and CP-odd transport on these variables. As the magnetic field couples to the flavor sector only, one should take the Veneziano limit where the number of flavors and colors are large while their ratio is kept fixed. We investigate the corresponding holographic background in the approximation where the ratio of flavors to colors is finite but small. We demonstrate that B-dependence of the entropy of QCD is in qualitative agreement with the recent lattice studies.…
We establish a holographic QCD model for four flavors, where a light scalar field $X$ and a heavy scalar field $H$ are introduced, separately. The $H$ field is responsible for the breaking of $SU(N_f=4)$ to $SU(N_f=3)$. The ground state and its Regge excitation of meson spectra in the light flavor sector and heavy flavor sector as well as the ligh-heavy mesons are well in agreement with the Particle data group (PDG). Due to the additional introduction of the $H$ field in the model, different Regge slopes for light and heavy mesons can be achieved.
The real-time dissociation of the heavy quarkonium in a strongly coupled boost-invariant non-Abelian plasma relaxing towards equilibrium is analyzed in a holographic framework. The effects driving the plasma out of equilibrium are described by boundary quenching, impulsive variations of the boundary metric. Quarkonium is represented by a classical string with endpoints kept close to the boundary. The evolution of the string profile is computed in the time-dependent geometry, and the dissociation time is evaluated for different configurations with respect to the direction of the plasma expansio…
With proper profiles of the scalar potential and the dilaton field, for the first time, the spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in the vacuum and its restoration at finite temperature are correctly realized in the holographic QCD framework. In the chiral limit, a nonzero chiral condensate develops in the vacuum and decreases with temperature, and the phase transition is of 2nd order for two-flavor case and of 1st order for three-flavor case. In the case of explicit chiral symmetry breaking, in two-flavor case, the 2nd order phase transition turns to crossover with any nonzero current quark ma…
We propose a holographic model of baryon interactions based on non-supersymmetric D7-anti-D7 flavor branes embedded in the Klebanov-Strassler background. The baryons are D3-branes wrapping the 3-sphere of the conifold with M strings connecting the D3 and the flavor branes. Depending on the location of the latter there are two possibilities: the D3 either remains separate from the flavor branes or dissolves in them and becomes a flavor instanton. The leading order interaction between the baryons is a competition between the attraction and the repulsion due to the sigma and omega mesons. The lig…
We present a study of flavor structures of transverse charge and anomalous magnetization densities for both unpolarized and transversely polarized nucleons. We consider two different models for the electromagnetic form factors in holographic QCD. The flavor form factors are obtained by decomposing the Dirac and Pauli form factors for nucleons using the charge and isospin symmetry. The results are compared with two standard phenomenological parametrizations.
We study two aspects of 3D QCD with massless fermions in a holographic set-up from string theory, based on D3/D7 branes; parity anomaly and baryons as baby Skyrmions. We first give a novel account of parity anomaly of 3D QCD with odd number of flavors from the IR holographic viewpoint by observing a subtle point in D7 brane embeddings with a given fixed UV theory. We also discuss its UV origin in terms of weakly coupled D-brane pictures. We then focus on the parity-symmetric case of even number of N_F flavors, and study baryons in the holographic model. We identify the monopoles of U(N_F) gaug…
Motivated by recent studies of intersecting D-brane systems in critical string theory and phenomenological AdS/QCD models, we present a detailed analysis for the vector and scalar fluctuations in a non-critical holographic QCD model in the high temperature phase, i.e., the chiral symmetric phase. This model is described by $N_f$ pairs of D4 and $\bar{\text{D4}}$ probe branes in a non-critical ${AdS_6}$ black hole background. Focusing on the hydrodynamic as well as the high frequency limit, we analytically obtain spectral functions for vector and scalar modes on the flavor probe. Then we extrac…
In this work, we offer a dynamical soft-wall model to describe the gluodynamics and chiral dynamics in one systematical framework. We firstly construct a quenched dynamical holographic QCD (hQCD) model in the graviton-dilaton framework for the pure gluon system, then develop a dynamical hQCD model for the two flavor system in the graviton-dilaton-scalar framework by adding light flavors on the gluodynamical background. For two forms of dilaton background field $Φ=μ_G^2z^2$ and $Φ=μ_G^2z^2\tanh(μ_{G^2}^4z^2/μ_G^2)$, the quadratic correction to dilaton background field at infrared encodes import…
We present a holographic realization of large Nc massless QCD in two dimensions using a D2/D8 brane construction. The flavor axial anomaly is dual to a three dimensional Chern-Simons term which turns out to be of leading order, and it affects the meson spectrum and holographic renormalization in crucial ways. The massless flavor bosons that exist in the spectrum are found to decouple from the heavier mesons, in agreement with the general lore of non-Abelian bosonization. We also show that an external dynamical photon acquires a mass through the three dimensional Chern-Simons term as expected f…
We examine lepton flavor violating couplings of the neutrinos to W boson in medium energy setup of a beta-beam experiment. We show that muon production via quasielastic scattering and deep inelastic scattering processes nu_e n-> mu p and nu_e N-> mu X are very sensitive to W-mu-nu_e couplings. We perform a model independent analysis and obtain 95% confidence level bounds on these couplings.
A holographic model of probe quarkonia is presented, where the dynamical gravity-dilaton background is adjusted to the thermodynamics of 2 +1 flavor QCD with physical quark masses. The quarkonia action is modified to account for a systematic study of the heavy-quark mass dependence. We focus on the $J/ψ$ and $Υ$ spectral functions and relate our model to heavy quarkonia formation as a special aspect of hadron phenomenology in heavy-ion collisions at LHC.
We study the holographic light meson spectra and their mass splitting in the nuclear medium. In order to describe the nuclear matter, we take into account the thermal charged AdS geometry with two flavor charges, which can be reinterpreted as the number densities of proton and neutron after some field redefinitions. We show that the meson mass splitting occurs when there exists the density difference between proton and neutron. Depending on the flavor charge, the mass of the positively (negatively) charged meson increases (decreases) as the density difference increases, whereas the neutral mes…
We propose a five-dimensional framework for modeling the background geometry associated to ordinary Yang-Mills (YM) as well as to nonsupersymmetric gauge theories possessing an infrared fixed point with fermions in various representations of the underlying gauge group. The model is based on the improved holographic approach, on the string theory side, and on the conjectured all-orders beta function for the gauge theory one. We first analyze the YM gauge theory. We then investigate the effects of adding flavors and show that, in the holographic description of the conformal window, the geometry …
A holographic model of probe vector mesons (quarkonia) is presented, where the dynamical gravity-dilaton background is adjusted to the thermodynamics of 2 +1 flavor QCD with physical quark masses. The vector meson action is modified to account for various quark masses. We focus on the $Φ$, $J/ψ$ and $Υ$ meson melting in agreement with hadron phenomenology in heavy-ion collisions at LHC, that is the formation of hadrons at the observed freeze-out temperature of 155 MeV.
Motivated by recent studies of deep inelastic scattering (DIS) off the $\mathcal{N}=4$ super-Yang-Mills (SYM) plasma, holographically dual to $AdS_5\times S^5$ black hole, we in this note use the spacelike flavor current to probe the internal structure of one holographic quark-gluon plasma, which is described by the Sakai-Sugimoto model at high temperature phase (i.e., the chiral symmetric phase). The plasma structure function is extracted from the retarded flavor current-current correlator. Our main aim here is to explore the effect of non-conformality on these physical quantities. As usual, …
We use a variant of the $D4$-$D8$ construction that includes two chiral and one heavy meson, to describe heavy-light baryons and their exotics as heavy mesons bound to a flavor instanton in bulk. At strong coupling, the heavy meson is shown to {\it always bind} in the form of a flavor instanton zero mode in the fundamental representation. The ensuing instanton moduli for the heavy baryons exhibits both chiral and heavy quark symmetry. We detail how to quantize it, and derive model independent mass relations for heavy bayons with a single-heavy quark in leading order, in overall agreement with …
In this work, we first derive the corrections to the instanton configuration of the flavored gauge field in the D4-D8 model with generic flavor numbers. Then, as the instanton configuration on the D8-branes represents equivalently baryon in this model, keeping our corrections in hand, we systemically study the spectrum of baryon, heavy-light baryon or heavy-light meson and find it is possible to fit the experimental data with the meson data in this model. Besides, we briefly outline how to include the interaction of glueball and heavy-light meson or baryon with our corrections, evaluate numeri…
A first attempt to accommodate the chiral and deconfining phase transitions of QCD in the bottom-up holographic framework is given. We constrain the relation between dilaton field $ϕ$ and metric warp factor $A_e$ and get several reasonable models in the Einstein-Dilaton system. Using the potential reconstruction approach, we solve the corresponding gravity background. Then we fit the background-related parameters by comparing the equation of state with the two-flavor lattice QCD results. After that we study the temperature dependent behavior of Polyakov loop and chiral condensate under those b…
We show that holographic models of QCD predict the presence of a Chern-Simons coupling between vector and axial-vector mesons at finite baryon density. In the AdS/CFT dictionary, the coefficient of this coupling is proportional to the baryon number density, and is fixed uniquely in the five-dimensional holographic dual by anomalies in the flavor currents. For the lightest mesons, the coupling mixes transverse $ρ$ and $a_1$ polarization states. At sufficiently large baryon number densities, it produces an instability, which causes the $ρ$ and $a_1$ mesons to condense in a state breaking both ro…
We show that holographic composite Higgs Models with a discrete A4 symmetry naturally predict hierarchical charged lepton masses and an approximate tri-bimaximal lepton mixing with the correct scale of neutrino masses. They also satisfy current constraints from electroweak precision tests, lepton flavor violation and lepton mixing in a large region of parameter space. Two phenomenologically relevant features arise in these models. First, an extra suppression on the lepton Yukawa couplings makes the tau lepton more composite than naively expected from its mass. As a consequence new light lepton…
We try to introduce heavy flavors to Sakai-Sugimoto model by regarding higher dimensional components of gauge fields as heavy mesons. Using the Forgács and Manton approach, we obtain a theory composed of heavy mesons and the instanton of light flavors. Applying the collective coordinate quantization method, we derived a mass formula of heavy baryons. In the leading order of $1/m_{H}$ expansion ($m_{H}$ the mass of a heavy quark), we find singlet and doublet states in the heavy quark symmetry (HQS). Also, we obtain the degenerate Roper like and odd parity excitations. By virtue of heavy meson d…
The fraction of heavy vector mesons produced in a heavy ion collision, as compared to a proton proton collision, serves as an important indication of the formation of a thermal medium, the quark gluon plasma. This sort of analysis strongly depends on understanding the thermal effects of a medium like the plasma on the states of heavy mesons. In particular, it is crucial to know the temperature ranges where they undergo a thermal dissociation, or melting. AdS/QCD models are know to provide an important tool for the calculation of hadronic masses, but in general are not consistent with the obser…
We present a new class of models of lepton flavor in the composite Higgs framework. Following the concept of minimality, they lead to a rich phenomenology in good agreement with the current experimental picture. Because of a unification of the right-handed leptons, our scenario is very predictive and can naturally lead to a violation of lepton-flavor universality in neutral current interactions. We will show that, in particular, the anomaly in $R_K= {\cal B}(B \to K μ^+ μ^-)/{\cal B}(B \to K e^+ e^-)$, found by LHCb, can be addressed, while other constraints from quark- and lepton-flavor physi…
We study the nuclear symmetry energy of dense matter using holographic QCD. To this end, we consider two flavor branes with equal quark masses in a D4/D6/D6 model. We find that at all densities the symmetry energy monotonically increases. At small densities, it exhibits a power law behavior with the density, $E_{\rm sym} \sim ρ^{1/2}$.
We consider the backreaction of the fundamental flavor degrees of freedom on the AdS$_5$-Schwarz background, and calculate their contributions to the shear viscosity and jet-quenching parameter of the thermal quark-gluon plasma.
The drag force of charm quarks propagating through a thermalized system of Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) has been considered within the framework of both conformal/non-conformal Anti de Sitter (AdS) correspondence. Newly derived Einstein Fluctuation-Dissipation relation has been used to calculate the heavy flavor diffusion coefficients. Using the drag and diffusion coefficients as inputs Langevin equation has been solved to study the heavy flavor suppression factor. It has been shown that within conformal AdS correspondence the D-meson suppression at LHC energy can be reproduced where as the non-co…
