Conformality or confinement (II): One-flavor CFTs and mixed-representation QCD

Understand

We study QCD-like four dimensional theories in the theoretically controlled framework of deformation theory and/or twisted partition function on S*1 x R*3.

• By using duality, we show that a class of one-flavor theories exhibit new physical phenomena: discrete chiral symmetry breaking induced by the condensation of topological disorder operators, and confinement and the generation of mass gap due to new non-selfdual topological excitations.
• In the R*4 limit, we argue that the mass gap disappears, the chiral symmetry breaking vacua are of runaway type, and the theory flows to a CFT.
• We also study mixed-representation theories and find abelian chiral symmetry breaking by topological operators charged under abelian chiral symmetries.