The Quark Condensate in Multi-Flavour QCD - Planar Equivalence Confronting Lattice Simulations

TL;DR

This paper uses planar equivalence to relate supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory to QCD, enabling predictions of the quark condensate in QCD with multiple flavors and comparing these predictions with lattice simulation results.

Contribution

It refines and tests earlier predictions of the QCD quark condensate derived from supersymmetric theory using lattice data.

Findings

Predicted quark condensate values agree with lattice results.

Validated the use of planar equivalence for non-perturbative QCD predictions.

Extended the analysis to QCD with various flavor numbers.

Abstract

Planar equivalence between the large $N$ limits of ${\cal N}=1$ Super Yang-Mills (SYM) theory and a variant of QCD with fermions in the antisymmetric representation is a powerful tool to obtain analytic non-perturbative results in QCD itself. In particular, it allows the quark condensate for $N=3$ QCD with quarks in the fundamental representation to be inferred from exact calculations of the gluino condensate in ${\cal N}=1$ SYM. In this paper, we review and refine our earlier predictions for the quark condensate in QCD with a general number $n_f$ of flavours and confront these with lattice results.