The Spectroscopy and Form Factors of Nucleon Resonances from Superconformal Quantum Mechanics and Holographic QCD

The superconformal algebraic approach to hadronic physics is used to construct a semiclassical effective theory for nucleons which incorporates essential nonperturbative dynamical features, such as the emergence of a confining scale and the Regge resonance spectrum. Relativistic bound-state equations for nucleons follow from the extension of superconformal quantum mechanics to the light front and its holographic embedding in a higher dimensional gravity theory. Superconformal algebra has been used elsewhere to describe the connections between the light mesons and baryons, but in the present context it relates the fermion positive and negative chirality states and uniquely determines the confinement potential of nucleons. The holographic mapping of multi-quark bound states also leads to a light-front cluster decomposition of form factors for an arbitrary number of constituents. The remarkable analytical structure which follows incorporates the correct scaling behavior at high photon virtualities and also vector dominance at low energies.