A. Chiral Symmetry: Chi-Ral Rotations

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broken chiral symmetry, and the nuclear forces which will Here, a = 1, . . . 8, and the λa are Gell-Mann’s SU (3) fla-
allow to put nuclear physics on firm theoretical grounds vor matrices. The singlet axial current is anomalous, and
and also gives rise to a very accurate calculational scheme thus not conserved. The actual symmetry group of mass-
for nuclear forces and the properties of nuclei. less QCD is generated by the charges of the conserved
This review is organized as follows: In this section, we currents, it is G0 = SU (3)R × SU (3)L × U (1)V . The
briefly discuss some of the concepts underlying the chiral U (1)V subgroup of G0 generates conserved baryon num-
effective field theory of the nuclear forces and make con- ber since the isosinglet vector current counts the number
tact to ab initio lattice simulations of two-baryon systems of quarks minus antiquarks in a hadron. The remain-
as well as to more phenomenological approaches. Sec. II ing group SU (3)R × SU (3)L is often referred to as chiral
deals with the foundations and applications of nuclear SU (3). Note that one also considers the light u and d
EFT and should be considered the central piece of this quarks only (with the strange quark mass fixed at its
review. In particular, tests of these forces in few-nucleon physical value), in that case, one speaks of chiral SU (2)
systems are discussed. Attempts to tackle nuclear matter and must replace the generators in Eq. (1.2) by the Pauli-
and finite nuclei are considered in sec. III. We end with matrices. Let us mention that QCD is also invariant
a short summary and outlook. under the discrete symmetries of parity (P ), charge con-
jugation (C) and time reversal (T ). Although interesting
in itself, we do not consider strong CP violation and the
A. Chiral symmetry related θ-term in what follows, see e.g. (1).
The chiral symmetry is a symmetry of the Lagrangian
First, we must discuss chiral symmetry in the context of QCD but not of the ground state or the particle
of QCD. Chromodynamics is a non-abelian SU (3)color spectrum – to describe the strong interactions in na-
gauge theory with Nf = 6 flavors of quarks, three of them ture, it is crucial that chiral symmetry is spontaneously
being light (u, d, s) and the other three heavy (c, b, t). broken. This can be most easily seen from the fact
Here, light and heavy refers to a typical hadronic scale of that hadrons do not appear in parity doublets. If chi-
about 1 GeV. In what follows, we consider light quarks ral symmetry were exact, from any hadron one could
only (the heavy quarks are to be considered as decou- generate by virtue of an axial transformation another
pled). The QCD Lagrangian reads state of exactly the same quantum numbers except of
1 opposite parity. The spontaneous symmetry breaking
LQCD = − Tr (Gµν Gµν ) + q̄ iγ µ Dµ q − q̄M q leads to the formation of a quark condensate in the
2g 2
vacuum h0|q̄q|0i = h0|q̄L qR + q̄R qL |0i, thus connect-
= L0QCD − q̄M q , (1.1) ing the left- with the right-handed quarks. In the ab-
sence of quark masses this expectation value is flavor-
where we have absorbed the gauge coupling in the defi- ¯
independent: h0|ūu|0i = h0|dd|0i = h0|q̄q|0i. More pre-
nition of the gluon field and color indices are suppressed. cisely, the vacuum is only invariant under the subgroup
The three-component vector q collects the quark fields, of vector rotations times the baryon number current,
q T (x) = (u(s), d(x), s(x)). As far as the strong inter- H0 = SU (3)V × U (1)V . This is the generally accepted
actions are concerned, the different quarks u, d, s have picture that is supported by general arguments (2) as
identical properties, except for their masses. The quark well as lattice simulations of QCD (for a recent study,
masses are free parameters in QCD - the theory can be see (3)). In fact, the vacuum expectation value of the
formulated for any value of the quark masses. In fact, quark condensate is only one of the many possible order
light quark QCD can be well approximated by a fictitious parameters characterizing the spontaneous symmetry vi-
world of massless quarks, denoted L0QCD in Eq. (1.1). Re- olation - all operators that share the invariance properties
markably, this theory contains no adjustable parameter - of the vacuum qualify as order parameters. The quark
the gauge coupling g merely sets the scale for the renor- condensate nevertheless enjoys a special role, it can be
malization group invariant scale ΛQCD . Furthermore, in shown to be related to the density of small eigenvalues
the massless world left- and right-handed quarks are com- of the QCD Dirac operator (see (4) and more recent dis-
pletely decoupled. The Lagrangian of massless QCD is cussions in (5; 6)), limM→0 h0|q̄q|0i = −π ρ(0). For free
invariant under separate unitary global transformations fields, ρ(λ) ∼ λ3 near λ = 0. Only if the eigenvalues
of the left- and right-hand quark fields, the so-called chi- accumulate near zero, one obtains a non-vanishing con-
ral rotations, qI → VI qI , VI ∈ U (3) , I = L, R, leading densate. This scenario is indeed supported by lattice
to 32 = 9 conserved left- and 9 conserved right-handed simulations and many model studies involving topologi-
currents by virtue of Noether’s theorem. These can be cal objects like instantons or monopoles.
expressed in terms of vector (V = L+R) and axial-vector
(A = L − R) currents Before discussing the implications of spontaneous sym-
metry breaking for QCD, we briefly remind the reader
λa of Goldstone’s theorem (7; 8): to every generator of a
V0µ = q̄ γ µ q , Vaµ = q̄ γ µ q, spontaneously broken symmetry corresponds a massless
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λa excitation of the vacuum. These states are the Gold-
Aµ0 = q̄ γ µ γ5 q , Aµa = q̄ γ µ γ5 q, (1.2) stone bosons, collectively denoted as pions π(x) in what
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