QCD at Theta ~ Pi reexamined: domain walls and spontaneous CP violation

Abstract

We consider QCD at Theta ~ Pi with two, one and zero light flavours Nf, using the Di Vecchia-Veneziano-Witten effective lagrangian. For Nf=2, we show that CP is spontaneously broken at Theta = Pi for finite quark mass splittings, z= Md/Mu \not= 1. In the z-Theta plane, there is a line of first order transitions at Theta = Pi with two critical endpoints, z1* < z < z2*. We compute the tension of the domain walls relating the two CP violating vacua. For Mu=Md the tension of the family of equivalent domain walls agrees with the expression derived by Smilga from chiral perturbation theory at next-to-leading order. For z1* < z < z2*, z \not= 1, there is only one domain wall and a wall-some sphaleron at Theta = Pi. At the critical points, z = z*, the domain wall fades away, CP is restored and the transition becomes of second order. For Nf = 1, CP is spontaneously broken only if the number of colours Nc is large and/or if the quark is sufficiently heavy. Taking the heavy quark limit (~ Nf= 0) provides a simple derivation of the multibranch Theta dependence of the vacuum energy of large Nc pure Yang-Mills theory. In the large Nc limit, there are many quasi-stable vacua with decay rate Gamma ~ exp(-N_c^4).