NICER view on holographic QCD

The holographic models for dense QCD matter work surprisingly well. A general implication seems that the deconfinement phase transition dictates the maximum mass of neutron stars. The nuclear matter phase turns out to be rather stiff which, if continuously merged with nuclear matter models based on effective field theories, leads to the conclusion that neutron stars do not have quark matter cores in the light of all current astrophysical data. We comment that as the perturbative QCD results are in stark contrast with strong coupling results, any future simulations of neutron star mergers incorporating corrections beyond ideal fluid should proceed cautiously. For this purpose, we provide a model which treats nuclear and quark matter phases in a unified framework at strong coupling.

Holographic colour superconductors at finite coupling with NJL Interactions

We study a bottom-up holographic description of the QCD colour superconducting phase in the presence of higher derivative corrections. We expand this holographic model in the context of Gauss–Bonnet (GB) gravity. The Cooper pair condensate has been investigated in the deconfinement phase for different values of the GB coupling parameter $$\lambda _{G B}$$ λ GB , we observe a change in the value of the critical chemical potential $$\mu _c$$ μ c in comparison to Einstein gravity. We find that $$\mu _c$$ μ c grows as $$\lambda _{G B}$$ λ GB increases. We add four fermion interactions and show that in the presence of these corrections the main interesting features of the model are still present and that the intrinsic attractive interaction can not be switched off. This study suggests to find GB corrections to equation of state of holographic QCD matter.

Holographic QCD and the muon anomalous magnetic moment

We review the recent progress made in using holographic QCD to study hadronic contributions to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, in particular the hadronic light-by-light scattering contribution, where the short-distance constraints associated with the axial anomaly are notoriously difficult to satisfy in hadronic models. This requires the summation of an infinite tower of axial vector mesons, which is naturally present in holographic QCD models, and indeed takes care of the longitudinal short-distance constraint due to Melnikov and Vainshtein. Numerically the results of simple hard-wall holographic QCD models point to larger contributions from axial vector mesons than assumed previously, while the predicted contributions from pseudo-Goldstone bosons agree nicely with data-driven approaches.

Study of phases in a holographic QCD model

Witten–Sakai–Sugimoto model is used to study Yang–Mills theory with flavors and large number of colors at finite temperature and in the presence of chemical potential for baryon number and isospin. Sources for [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] gauge fields on the flavor 8-branes are D4-branes wrapped on [Formula: see text] part of the background. Here, gauge symmetry on the flavor branes has been decomposed as [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] is within [Formula: see text] and generated by the diagonal generator. We show various brane configurations, along with the phases in the boundary theory they correspond to, and explore the possibility of phase transition between various pairs of phases.