Contributor info: Prof. Daniel Nogradi

Attila Pasztor, Szabolcs Borsanyi, Zoltan Fodor, Matteo Giordano, Sandor D. Katz, Daniel Nogradi, Chik Him Wong

SciPost Phys. Proc. 6, 002 (2022) · published 31 May 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Most lattice studies of hot and dense QCD matter rely on extrapolation from zero or imaginary chemical potentials. The ill-posedness of numerical analytic continuation puts severe limitations on the reliability of such methods. We studied the QCD chiral transition at finite real baryon density with the more direct sign reweighting approach. We simulate up to a baryochemical potential-temperature ratio of $\mu_B/T=2.7$, covering the RHIC Beam Energy Scan range, and penetrating the region where methods based on analytic continuation are unpredictive. This opens up a new window to study QCD matter at finite $\mu_B$ from first principles.

Daniel Nogradi, Balint Ozsvath

SciPost Phys. 12, 169 (2022) · published 20 May 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Spontaneous scale invariance breaking and the associated Goldstone boson, the dilaton, is investigated in renormalizable, unitary, interacting non-supersymmetric scalar field theories in $4-\varepsilon$ dimensions. At leading order it is possible to construct models which give rise to spontaneous scale invariance breaking classically and indeed a massless dilaton can be identified. Beyond leading order, in order to have no anomalous scale symmetry breaking in QFT, the models need to be defined at a Wilson-Fisher fixed point with exact conformal symmetry. It is shown that this requirement on the couplings is incompatible with having the type of flat direction which would be necessary for an exactly massless dilaton. As a result spontaneous scale symmetry breaking and an exactly massless dilaton can not occur in renormalizable, unitary $4-\varepsilon$ dimensional scalar QFT. The arguments apply to $\phi^6$ theory in $3-\varepsilon$ dimensions as well.