Meson/Baryon/Tetraquark Supersymmetry from Superconformal Algebra and Light-Front Holography

TL;DR

This paper develops a supersymmetric light-front holographic model for hadrons, revealing mass relations and predicting tetraquarks, with implications for understanding confinement and improving QCD predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a superconformal algebra-based framework connecting mesons, baryons, and tetraquarks, and constructs an effective Hamiltonian embedding superconformal quantum mechanics into AdS space.

Findings

Mass relations between mesons and baryons of same parity

Prediction of tetraquarks degenerate with baryons

A universal confinement scale parameter

Abstract

Superconformal algebra leads to remarkable connections between the masses of mesons and baryons of the same parity -- supersymmetric relations between the bosonic and fermionic bound states of QCD. Supercharges connect the mesonic eigenstates to their baryonic superpartners, where the mesons have internal angular momentum one unit higher than the baryons. We also predict the existence of tetraquarks which are degenerate in mass with baryons with the same angular momentum. An effective supersymmetric light-front Hamiltonian for hadrons composed of light quarks can be constructed by embedding superconformal quantum mechanics into AdS space. The breaking of conformal symmetry determines a unique quark-confining light-front potential for light hadrons including spin-spin interactions in agreement with the soft-wall AdS/QCD approach and light-front holography. The mass-squared of the light hadrons can be expressed as a frame-independent decomposition of contributions from the constituent kinetic energy, the confinement potential, and spin-spin contributions. The mass of the pion eigenstate vanishes in the chiral limit. Only one mass parameter appears; it sets the confinement mass scale, a universal value for the slope of all Regge trajectories, the nonzero mass of the proton and other hadrons in the chiral limit, as well as the mass parameter of the pQCD running coupling. The result is an effective coupling defined at all momenta. The matching of the high and low momentum-transfer regimes determines a scale $Q_0$ which sets the interface between perturbative and nonperturbative hadron dynamics. as well as the factorization scale for structure functions and distribution amplitudes. This procedure, in combination with the scheme-independent PMC procedure for setting renormalization scales, can greatly improve the precision of QCD predictions.