Degeneracy Between the Regge Slope of Mesons and Baryons from Supersymmetry

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that in a modified large-N QCD framework, mesons and baryons become degenerate and supersymmetric partners due to string tension equivalence, supported by string theory dualities.

Contribution

It generalizes QCD with a two-index antisymmetric quark representation, showing mesons and baryons as supersymmetric string partners at large N.

Findings

Mesons and baryons become degenerate in the orientifold large-N limit.

String tensions of mesons and baryons coincide due to supersymmetry.

The string description aligns with dual type 0' string theory spectra.

Abstract

We consider the degeneracy between the Regge slope of mesons and baryons in QCD. We argue that within the "orientifold large-N approximation" asymptotically massive mesons and baryons become supersymmetric partners and hence degenerate. To this end, we generalize QCD by a SU(N) theory with a quark in the two-index antisymmetric representation. We show that in this framework the meson is represented by an oriented bosonic QCD-string and the baryon is represented by an un-oriented fermionic QCD-string. At large-N, due to an equivalence with super Yang-Mills, the tensions of the bosonic and the fermionic strings coincide. Our description of mesons and baryons as oriented and un-oriented bosonic and fermionic QCD-strings is in full agreement with the spectra of open strings in the dual type 0' string theory.