Worldvolume fermions as baryons in holographic quantum chromodynamics with instantons

Abstract

In this study, we investigated worldvolume fermions on the flavor brane in the D0–D4/D8 model, which is holographically equivalent to four-dimensional quantum chromodynamics with instantons or equivalently with a theta angle. The action involving the worldvolume fermions was obtained by the T-duality rules in string theory, and we accordingly derived their effective five-dimensional and canonical four-dimensional forms by using the systematic dimensional reduction and decomposition of the spinor. Subsequently, we used the AdS/CFT dictionary to evaluate the two-point correlation function as the spectral function for the worldvolume fermions and interpreted the fermions as baryons by analyzing their quantum number with the baryon vertex in holography. In this sense, the interacted action involving the worldvolume fermions and gauge field on the flavor brane was finally derived in holography, which describes the various interactions of mesons and baryons with instantons in the large-N limit. Therefore, this study provides a holographic picture to describe baryons and their interactions based on string theory, particularly in the presence of instantons or a theta angle.