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Applications of the gauge/gravity duality

University of British Columbia

While varied applications of gauge/gravity duality have arisen in literature from studies of condensed matter systems including superconductivity to studies of quenched Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), this thesis focuses on applications of the duality to holographic QCD-like field theories and to inflationary model that uses a QCD-like field theory. In particular the first half of the thesis examines a holographic QCD-like field theory with scalar quarks closely related to the Sakai-Sugimoto model of holographic QCD. The behaviour of baryons and mesons in the model is examined to find a continuous mass spectrum for the mesons, and a baryon that can identified with a topological charge. It then slightly modifies the theory to further study the behaviour of holographic field theories. The second half of the thesis presents a novel model for early Universe inflation, using an SU(N) gauge field theory as the inflaton. The inflation model is studied at both weak coupling and strong coupling using the gauge/gravity duality. The robustness of model’s predictions to exciting multiple inflationary fields beyond the single field of its original proposal, and its possible role in breaking the supersymmetry of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model is also explored.

Text

2013-08-07

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/44764

Physics

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/