Light dilaton in a metastable vacuum

Daniel Elander (1) , Maurizio Piai , John Roughley

1 L2C - Laboratoire Charles Coulomb

We identify a parametrically light dilaton by studying the perturbations of metastable vacua along a branch of regular supergravity backgrounds that are dual to four-dimensional confining field theories. The branch includes also stable and unstable solutions. The former encompass, as a special case, the geometry proposed by Witten as a holographic model of confinement. The latter approach a supersymmetric solution, by enhancing a condensate in the dual field theory. A phase transition separates the space of stable backgrounds from the metastable ones. In proximity of the phase transition, one of the lightest scalar states inherits some of the properties of the dilaton, despite not being particularly light.

Mots clés: dimension: 7; free energy; duality: holography; vacuum state: stability; critical phenomena; dilaton; supergravity: background; field theory: confinement; gauge/gravity duality; quantum gravity; String theory

Domaines: Physique des Hautes Energies - Théorie [hep-th]; Physique des Hautes Energies - Réseau [hep-lat]; Physique des Hautes Energies - Phénoménologie [hep-ph]

Daniel Elander, Maurizio Piai, John Roughley. Light dilaton in a metastable vacuum. Physical Review D, 2021, 103 (4), pp.046009. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevD.103.046009⟩. ⟨hal-03047633⟩