Highly excited pure gauge SU(3) flux tubes

Flux tube spectra are expected to have full towers of levels due to the quantization of the string vibrations. We study a spectrum of flux tubes with static quark and antiquark sources with pure gauge SU(3) lattice QCD in 3+1 dimensions up to a significant number of excitations. To go high in the spectrum, we specialize in the most symmetric case Σg+, use a large set of operators, solve the generalized eigenvalue and compare different lattice QCD gauge actions and anisotropies.

Black holes with topological charges in Chern-Simons AdS5 supergravity

We study static black hole solutions with locally spherical horizons coupled to non-Abelian field in $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 4 Chern-Simons AdS5 supergravity. They are governed by three parameters associated to the mass, axial torsion and amplitude of the internal soliton, and two ones to the gravitational hair. They describe geometries that can be a global AdS space, naked singularity or a (non-)extremal black hole. We analyze physical properties of two inequivalent asymptotically AdS solutions when the spatial section at radial infinity is either a 3-sphere or a projective 3-space. An important feature of these 3-parametric solutions is that they possess a topological structure including two SU(2) solitons that wind nontrivially around the black hole horizon, as characterized by the Pontryagin index. In the extremal black hole limit, the solitons’ strengths match and a soliton-antisoliton system unwinds. That limit admits both non-BPS and BPS configurations. For the latter, the pure gauge and non-pure gauge solutions preserve 1/2 and 1/16 of the original supersymmetries, respectively. In a general case, we compute conserved charges in Hamiltonian formalism, finding many similarities with standard supergravity black holes.

Notes on two-dimensional pure supersymmetric gauge theories

In this note we study IR limits of pure two-dimensional supersymmetric gauge theories with semisimple non-simply-connected gauge groups including SU(k)/ℤk, SO(2k)/ℤ2, Sp(2k)/ℤ2, E6/ℤ3, and E7/ℤ2 for various discrete theta angles, both directly in the gauge theory and also in nonabelian mirrors, extending a classification begun in previous work. We find in each case that there are supersymmetric vacua for precisely one value of the discrete theta angle, and no supersymmetric vacua for other values, hence supersymmetry is broken in the IR for most discrete theta angles. Furthermore, for the one distinguished value of the discrete theta angle for which supersymmetry is unbroken, the theory has as many twisted chiral multiplet degrees of freedom in the IR as the rank. We take this opportunity to further develop the technology of nonabelian mirrors to discuss how the mirror to a G gauge theory differs from the mirror to a G/K gauge theory for K a subgroup of the center of G. In particular, the discrete theta angles in these cases are considerably more intricate than those of the pure gauge theories studied in previous papers, so we discuss the realization of these more complex discrete theta angles in the mirror construction. We find that discrete theta angles, both in the original gauge theory and their mirrors, are intimately related to the description of centers of universal covering groups as quotients of weight lattices by root sublattices. We perform numerous consistency checks, comparing results against basic group-theoretic relations as well as with decomposition, which describes how two-dimensional theories with one-form symmetries (such as pure gauge theories with nontrivial centers) decompose into disjoint unions, in this case of pure gauge theories with quotiented gauge groups and discrete theta angles.

An analysis of systematic effects in finite size scaling studies using the gradient flow

We propose a new strategy for the determination of the step scaling function $$\sigma (u)$$ σ ( u ) in finite size scaling studies using the gradient flow. In this approach the determination of $$\sigma (u)$$ σ ( u ) is broken in two pieces: a change of the flow time at fixed physical size, and a change of the size of the system at fixed flow time. Using both perturbative arguments and a set of simulations in the pure gauge theory we show that this approach leads to a better control over the continuum extrapolations. Following this new proposal we determine the running coupling at high energies in the pure gauge theory and re-examine the determination of the $$\Lambda $$ Λ -parameter, with special care on the perturbative truncation uncertainties.

Analytic construction of multi-brane solutions in cubic string field theory for any brane number

We present an analytic construction of multi-brane solutions with any integer brane number in cubic open string field theory (CSFT) on the basis of the ${K\!Bc}$ algebra. Our solution is given in the pure-gauge form $\Psi=U{Q_\textrm{B}} U^{-1}$ by a unitary string field $U$, which we choose to satisfy two requirements. First, the energy density of the solution should reproduce that of the $(N+1)$-branes. Second, the equations of motion (EOM) of the solution should hold against the solution itself. In spite of the pure-gauge form of $\Psi$, these two conditions are non-trivial ones due to the singularity at $K=0$. For the $(N+1)$-brane solution, our $U$ is specified by $[N/2]$ independent real parameters $\alpha_k$. For the 2-brane ($N=1$), the solution is unique and reproduces the known one. We find that $\alpha_k$ satisfying the two conditions indeed exist as far as we have tested for various integer values of $N\ (=2, 3, 4, 5, \ldots)$. Our multi-brane solutions consisting only of the elements of the ${K\!Bc}$ algebra have the problem that the EOM is not satisfied against the Fock states and therefore are not complete ones. However, our construction should be an important step toward understanding the topological nature of CSFT, which has similarities to the Chern–Simons theory in three dimensions.