Possible Color Octet Quark-Anti-Quark Condensate in the Instanton Model

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential formation of a color-octet quark-antiquark condensate in QCD using the instanton liquid model, finding evidence for standard chiral symmetry breaking but not for a color-octet condensate.

Contribution

It provides the first calculation of two-point correlation functions for color-octet operators in the instanton model, offering insights into possible Higgs-like phases in QCD.

Findings

Long range order in the standard <ar{\u03c6}> channel

No long range order in the color-octet channel

Suggests lattice QCD can test for a color-flavor locked Higgs phase

Abstract

Inspired by a recent proposal for a Higgs description of QCD we study the possible formation of a color-octet/flavor-octet quark-anti-quark condensate in the instanton liquid model. For this purpose we calculate two-point correlation functions of color-singlet and octet quark-anti-quark operators. We find long range order in the standard $<\bar{\psi}\psi>$ channel, but not in the color-octet channel. We emphasize that similar calculations in lattice QCD can check whether or not a color-flavor locked Higgs phase is realized in QCD at zero temperature and baryon density.