Vacuum Properties of QCD in an Electromagnetic Field

dc.contributor.advisorCohen, Thomas Den_US
dc.contributor.authorWerbos, Elizabethen_US
dc.contributor.departmentPhysicsen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2009-07-02T05:41:14Z
dc.date.available2009-07-02T05:41:14Z
dc.date.issued2009en_US
dc.description.abstractThe non-trivial vacuum properties of Quantum Chromodynamics can be affected by a constant external magnetic field. The chiral condensate and the magnetization of the vacuum are the two properties studied in this work. The chiral condensate, which is the order parameter for chiral symmetry breaking--one of the most important properties of QCD--is an optimal quantity to study at intermediate field strengths. Using both models and chiral perturbation theory, it can be shown that an electric field suppresses the chiral condensate whereas a magnetic field enhances it. Higher-order calculations in χPT may have a substantial effect on the magnitude of the shift in the chiral condensate, but their exact effect is unknown due to the uncertainty in the parameters of the theory. The second parameter, the magnetization, is used at fields large enough for perturbative calculations to be valid; at these scales, there is large explicit chiral symmetry breaking and the chiral condensate cannot be used. The first-order magnetization shows a correction of the form B log B; the calculation to next order in perturbation theory shows a correction small enough that non-perturbative corrections dominate.en_US
dc.format.extent724271 bytes
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/9148
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledPhysics, Elementary Particles and High Energyen_US
dc.titleVacuum Properties of QCD in an Electromagnetic Fielden_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

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