The Proton Mass and Scale-Invariant Hidden Local Symmetry for Compressed Baryonic Matter

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel theoretical framework combining hidden local symmetry and scale invariance to better understand dense baryonic matter, revealing insights into proton mass, parity doubling, and neutron star equations of state.

Contribution

It introduces a scale-invariant hidden local symmetry model that explains dense baryonic matter properties and the proton mass origin in a unified way.

Findings

Proton mass is largely not Nambu-Goldstone in origin.

Parity doubling appears at high density.

Equation of state varies from soft at low density to stiff at high density.

Abstract

I discuss how to access dense baryonic matter of compact stars by combining hidden local symmetry (HLS) of light-quark vector mesons with spontaneously broken scale invariance of a (pseudo) Nambu-Goldstone boson, dilaton, in a description that parallels the approach to dilatonic Higgs. Some of the surprising observations are that the bulk of proton mass is not Nambu-Goldstonian, parity doubling emerges at high density and the EoS of baryonic matter can be soft enough for heavy-ion processes at low density and stiff enough at high density for $\sim 2$ solar mass neutron stars.