Local P Violation Effects and Thermalization in QCD: Views from Quantum Field Theory and Holography

TL;DR

This paper links local P and CP violation and universal thermalization in high energy collisions to QCD quantum anomalies, suggesting vacuum configurations and holography explain observed phenomena and potentially relate to dark energy.

Contribution

It proposes a unified framework connecting QCD anomalies, vacuum configurations, and holography to explain P violation, thermalization, and long-range correlations in heavy ion collisions.

Findings

Vacuum configurations saturate QCD anomalies.

Thermal spectra arise from vacuum sheet distortions.

Long-range correlations linked to vacuum topology.

Abstract

We argue that the local violation of P and CP invariance in heavy ion collisions and the universal thermal aspects observed in high energy collisions are in fact two sides of the same coin, and both are related to quantum anomalies of QCD. We argue that the low energy relations representing the quantum anomalies of QCD are saturated by coherent low dimensional vacuum configurations as observed in Monte Carlo lattice studies. The thermal spectrum and approximate universality of the temperature with no dependence on energy of colliding particles in this framework is due to the fact that the emission results from the distortion of these low dimensional vacuum sheets rather than from the colliding particles themselves. The emergence of the long- range correlations of P odd domains (a feature which is apparently required for explanation of the asymmetry observed at RHIC and LHC) is also a result of the same distortion of the QCD vacuum configurations. We formulate the corresponding physics using the effective low energy effective Lagrangian. We also formulate the same physics in terms of the dual holographic picture when low-dimensional sheets of topological charge embedded in 4d space, as observed in Monte Carlo simulations, are identified with D2 branes. Finally, we argue that study of these long range correlations in heavy ion collisions could serve as a perfect test of a proposal that the observed dark energy in present epoch is a result of a tiny deviation of the QCD vacuum energy in expanding universe from its conventional value in Minkowski spacetime.