Holographic Baryons

TL;DR

This paper reviews the holographic D4-D8 model of low energy QCD, describing baryons as solitons and deriving a comprehensive effective theory for baryon-meson interactions with experimental comparisons.

Contribution

It introduces a method to derive an all-encompassing effective field theory for baryons in the holographic model, including leading and subleading interactions.

Findings

Baryons modeled as Pontryagin number solitons in holography

Derived a predictive baryon-meson interaction framework

Compared model predictions with experimental data

Abstract

We review baryons in the D4-D8 holographic model of low energy QCD, with the large $N_c$ and the large 't Hooft coupling limit. The baryon is identified with a bulk soliton of a unit Pontryagin number, which from the four-dimensional viewpoint translates to a heavily modified Skyrmion dressed by condensates of spin one mesons. We explore classical properties and find that the baryon in the holographic limit is amenable to an effective field theory description. We also present a simple method to capture all leading and subleading interactions in the $1/N_c$ and the derivative expansions. An infinitely predictive model of baryon-meson interactions is thus derived, although one may trust results only for low energy processes, given various approximations in the bulk. We showcase a few comparisons to experiments, such the leading axial couplings to pions, the leading vector-like coupling, and a qualitative prediction of the electromagnetic vector dominance that involves the entire tower of vector mesons. (This article is an expanded version of a proceeding contribution to "30 years of mathematical method in high energy physics," Kyoto 2008)