Date Thesis Awarded

7-2012

Access Type

Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only

Degree Name

Bachelors of Science (BS)

Department

Physics

Advisor

Joshua Erlich

Committee Members

Henry Krakauer

Junping Shi

Abstract

Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), which describes the strong nuclear force, is difficult to solve both analytically and numerically. We use a five-dimensional model of QCD motivated by the Anti-de Sitter/Conformal Field Theory (AdS/CFT) duality originally proposed by Maldacena. We discuss how this model and other variations in the literature represent chiral symmetry breaking, and test whether these models correctly reproduce chiral symmetry beyond leading order. We compare the predictions of two models, one which is correct to leading order, and another which is correct beyond leading order. The model correct to leading order does not properly predict the pion condensation phase transition, whereas the model with the correct beyond leading order qualitatively agrees with chiral perturbation theory in its description of pion condensation. Using these two models, we calculate certain observables and find agreement with experiment to within 15%.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Comments

Thesis is part of Honors ETD pilot project, 2008-2013. Migrated from Dspace in 2016.

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